13th International Critical Management Studies Conference

Convenors and affiliations

Anwesha Banerjee

Himadri Roy Chaudhuri*

Krishanu Rakshit

About

Organizational deviance is an act committed by an employee to exploit the company's resources and manipulate other employees for one's benefit at the organization's cost (Berry et al., 2007). Organizational deviance is precipitated by a more resourceful member of the organization on a less resourceful member by leveraging the norms of the organization in one's favor and often intercepting the same with one's social agency or interpersonal dynamics (Denker, 2017).

It appears that deviance is the only aspect of the modern organization which has remained constant with time (Pichler et al., 2022). While the perpetration of deviance and organization response remains a reality, the edicts and norms which govern the state of employees within the organization and that of the stakeholders outside the organization as they exist in the markets (Crane, 2013; Crane et al., 2018; 2022; Linstead et al., 2014; Phung and Crane, 2018; Rogerson et al., 2020; Chaudhuri and Belk, 2022) continue to remain at the center of the scholarly discussions.

We approach this situatedness through a critical lens, hoping to theorize deviance, deflection, and purposive organizational denial. But what interests us now is that even after so many years since the establishment of the modern, structured organization and society, such discussions of deviance have not lost their relevance.

We invoke Arendt (1961, 1963, 2006), Arendt and Kroh (1964) and her conceptualization of the 'evil' --- which comes into being almost spontaneously with the organization, making one ponder upon the embeddedness of the simultaneity between the constitution of the organization and the precipitation of organizational deviance (Brief et al., 2014; Pendas, 2007). Her argument could possibly be extended, and we may ask if (like the one in the Nazi organization) the lack of rationale and internal argument of conscience (Arendt, 1963; 1964) exist in modern organizations as well. While the logic of maximum efficiency and minimum cost, in its harshest forms, manifests itself in the context of outsourcing and globalization (refer to what happened in Rana Plaza in Bangladesh), the recent proclamations of normalized blindness and organization of evil, which made Arendt (1964) predict the perpetuity of evils along the faintest fault-lines of the organization in the hands of an "outrageously stupid" (Arendt, 1961), offer us with the possibility of one of the most uncomfortable questions of contemporary organizational theory.

Submission guidelines

Under these circumstances, we offer to present our Track along these lines of the politics of de-empathization and invite cross-disciplinary scholars to submit their papers on the following themes, which are indicative and are not comprehensive. Additionally, we may mention that submissions having an 'affirmative criticality' (Zembylas 2022) will be of special interest to us, but may not be limited strictly to:

* Doxa of Deviance

* Narratives of the marketplace deviance and Evilness during times of marketization-lived experiences and beyond

* Critical Literature review on Evilness and organization practice

* Contributions to organization silence in the era of outsourcing: Can we Normalize Rana

Plaza?

* Deviance and gender

* Making the narratives of collective organizational resilience

* Research dialogue on contestation, cooperation, and competition

* Research at the cross-section of normal and deviant consumption

* Corporate Deviance and Corporate Victimization

Should you have any questions, or need any clarifications, you may direct your queries to any of the track chairs.

References

Arendt, H. (1961). Freedom and politics. In Freedom and serfdom (pp. 191-217). Springer, Dordrecht.

Arendt, H. (1963). Man's Conquest of Space. The American Scholar, 527-540. Arendt, H., & Kroh, J. (1964). Eichmann in Jerusalem. New York: Viking Press. Arendt, H. (2006). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin.

Arendt, H. (2013). Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations. Melville House.

Berry, C. M., Ones, D. S., & Sackett, P. R. (2007). Interpersonal deviance, organizational deviance, and their common correlates: a review and meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(2), 410. Chaudhuri, R., & Belk, R. W. (2020). Marketization. Springer.

Crane, A. (2013). Modern slavery as a management practice: Exploring the conditions and capabilities for human exploitation. Academy of Management Review, 38(1), 49-69.

Crane, A., LeBaron, G., Phung, K., Behbahani, L., & Allain, J. (2021). Confronting the business models of modern slavery. Journal of Management Inquiry.

Denker, K. J. (2017). Power, emotional labor, and intersectional identity at work: I would not kiss my boss but I did not speak. In Organizational Autoethnographies (pp. 16-36). Routledge.

Linstead, S., Maréchal, G., & Griffin, R. W. (2014). Theorizing and researching the dark side of organization. Organization studies, 35(2), 165-188.

Pendas, D. O. (2007). " Eichmann in Jerusalem", Arendt in Frankfurt: The Eichmann Trial, the Auschwitz Trial, and the Banality of Justice. New German Critique, (100), 77-109.

Phung, K., & Crane, A. (2018). The business of modern slavery: Management and organizational perspectives. The SAGE Handbook of Human Trafficking and Modern-Day Slavery, 177-197.

Pichler, R., Roulet, T. J., & Paolella, L. (2022). A bailout for the outlaws: interactions between social control agents and the perception of organizational misconduct. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, (Forthcoming).

Rogerson, M., Crane, A., Soundararajan, V., Grosvold, J., & Cho, C. H. (2020). Organisational responses to mandatory modern slavery disclosure legislation: a failure of experimentalist governance? Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal.

Zembylas, M. (2022). Affirmative critique as a practice of responding to the impasse between post-truth and negative critique: pedagogical implications for schools. Critical Studies in Education, 63(2), 229-244.

Convenor biographies

Anwesha Banerjee (She/her): Anwesha is a doctoral scholar at XLRI, Jamshedpur India. Her doctoral research focuses on the area of organizational deviance. Email: fh18001@astra.xlri.ac.in.

Himadri RoyChaudhuri (He/him): Associated with the faculty of marketing at XLRI, Jamshedpur India. His primary interest lies in the lived experiences of marginal market actors. Email: himadri@xlri.ac.in. Research updates https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Himadri-Roy-Chaudhuri-2.

Krishanu Rakshit ( He/him): Associated with the Department of Marketing at ICN ARTEM Business School; Nancy, France. His research interests are varied, between analytical models and transformative consumption research. He can be reached at krishanu.rakshit@icn-artem.com

Convenors and affiliations

Jenna Ward (Conventry University, UK)

Anne-Marie Greene (University of York, UK)

Ruth Leonard (UK’s Association of Volunteer Managers & Macmillan Cancer Support)

About

There is a notable lack of research enquiry in the field of critical management studies, and indeed management studies more generally, which focuses on the particularities of the voluntary or non-profit sector. Here, the term ‘voluntary sector’ is used to describe organisations whose primary purpose is to create social impact rather than profit. It is often called the third sector, civil society, or the not-for-profit sector.

For example, a relevant title and keyword search in the British Journal of Management, yields only three articles since 1991. Similar searches in other established peer review management journals also yield low returns. However, this lack of coverage in the well-established management journals should not be taken for a lack of intellectual curiosity into the voluntary sector and its management practices. Instead, those who undertake research in this space have tended to publish in a small number of dedicated, internationally renowned journals such as Non-profit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Voluntary Sector Review or Voluntas. Consequently, the theorising, debates, and paradigmatic shifts that have occurred in management studies over recent years, have not always informed the work being undertaken with the voluntary and non-profit sector. The purpose of this stream is to connect the academic interest within the voluntary sector to the provenance and rigour of the field of management studies, in particular Critical Management Studies.

Similarly, the lacuna of coverage in management journals should not be viewed as evidence of a lack of significance the sector has on the academic field or to societies and economies. For example, in the UK, the voluntary sector contributes £20bn to the economy, employs almost a million people and 9.2 million people formally volunteer at least once a month (NCVO, 2022). The sector includes over 160, 000 organisations, ranging from large household name charities to tiny associations. The voluntary sector is also growing in significance, against the backdrop of severe spending cuts, where several services which were once provided by public sector organisations, or through public funds, are now being transferred to voluntary organisations (Lobao et al, 2018; McCabe and Phillimore, 2012; Alcock, 2012; Kane and Allen, 2011). Such trends are repeated throughout industrialised countries, while the work of international and national voluntary organisations in meeting shortfalls in key services such as health and social care is exacerbated in many countries in the global south.

Critical Management Studies (CMS), as a scholarly discipline committed to examining and challenging traditional management theories, values, and assumptions through a process of critically reflexive deconstruction is well-placed to support the maturation of voluntary sector studies. For CMS, the aim is to help individuals, organisations and societies understand why things ‘are as they are’ and through that process develop better norms, policies, ideas, and management values (Akella, 2008). This position of open enquiry will be helpful in countering the current trend within the voluntary sector that sees an unfettered adoption of for-profit management principles, policies, and practice – based on the assumption that ‘They’re all people, right?’

With recent criticisms of CMS being too critical of profit-seeking organisations being leveraged to challenge the role of Critical Management Studies in the business school, a concerted effort to ensure that the CMS canon delivers a more ‘affirmative engagement with alternative modes of organising and organisation’ (ICMS 2023) is required. The inclusion of the voluntary sector in this agenda is ripe for rigorous exploration. For example: O’Toole and Grey (2016: 56) argue that the narrow focus on paid work within management studies has both empirical and theoretical limitations, constrained as it is by the compulsion of the wage-labour relation. Work without explicit contracts or pay places considerable emphasis on the distinct nature of the psychological contract between manager and subordinates (Nichols, 2013; Vantilborgh et al., 2012). Despite a small number of academic studies within the voluntary sector field establishing that there are differences between managing volunteers and paid staff (Ward and Greene, 2018; Boezeman and Ellemers, 2009; Liao-Troth, 2001; Pearce, 1993), the characteristics of a paid employment relationship and associated human resource policies are often bluntly applied to volunteers (Alfes, Antunes, and Shantz, 2017). There are clear pressures for voluntary sector organizations to become more like for-profit organizations in areas such as membership growth, managerial formalization, and professionalization (Hager and Brudney, 2004, 2015; Harris, 1998, p. 155; Sanders and McClellan, 2014) but the implications of this on the theorising of management and organisational practices has received little consideration outside of the narrow field of voluntary sector studies.

This stream at the 2023 International Critical Management Studies conference, then, provides a space for theoretical and empirical consideration of the ways in which the specific particularities of the voluntary sector impact on the applicability of existing and development of new theories and models of management and organisational practices. We are inviting quantitative, qualitative, conceptual papers, reviews, meta-analyses and roundtable discussions from both academics and practitioners from the voluntary sector to explore issues that include, but are not limited to, the following:

• redressing the imbalance of literature focused on for-profit organisations and injecting necessary theory-driven enquiry into an area which has been dominated by an evaluation and policy focus within voluntary sector studies.
• the growing importance of the voluntary sector to support, maintain and deliver vital services across a range of areas including culture and heritage, sport and education, and health and care services.
• identification and exploration of key debates within the field of critical management studies that are directly relevant and applicable to the voluntary sector and vice versa.
• challenges and extensions to current understandings and allow new theorisations as a consequence of the critical evaluation of established theoretical concepts to the voluntary sector.
• the role of cause, calling or activism within the organisational objectives and day to day operations
• the place of unpaid workers and the lack of employment contracts for the millions of volunteers within the sector.

There are several rich management studies subjects which provide fertile ground for enquiry regarding the voluntary sector including, but not limited to:

• Leadership and change
• Emotions and emotion work
• Talent management and strategic HRM
• Pay and Reward
• Strategic resource planning
• Diversity and inclusion

Submission guidelines

Please submit a maximum of 500 words outlining the content of your proposed contribution to the stream to ad5431@coventry.ac.uk by the 31^st March 2023. Alongside traditional research papers we are receptive to alternative forms of presentation including, but not limited to, poetry, photo-essays, collage and participative methods.

We are also seeking submissions from those outside of the academic community, particularly those from the third, non-profit or voluntary sector.

Presentations will be made in person, but hybrid engagement is a possibility, upon request.

Decisions will be made and communicated by the 14^th April 2023.

References

Alcock, P., 2012. New policy spaces: The impact of devolution on third sector policy in the UK. Social Policy & Administration, 46(2), pp.219-238.

Alfes, K., Antunes, B. and Shantz, A.D., 2017. The management of volunteers–what can human resources do? A review and research agenda. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 28(1), pp.62-97.

Akella, D. (2008). A reflection on critical management studies. Journal of Management & Organization, 14(1), 100-110.

Boezeman, E. J., & Ellemers, N. (2009). Intrinsic need satisfaction and the job attitudes of volunteers versus employees working in a charitable volunteer organization. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 82, 897-914.

Hager, M.A. and Brudney, J.L., 2015. In search of strategy: Universalistic, contingent, and configurational adoption of volunteer management practices. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 25(3), pp.235-254.

Harris, M. E. (1998). Doing it their way: Organizational challenges for voluntary associations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 27, 144-158.

Liao-Troth, M. A. (2001). Attitude differences between paid workers and volunteers. Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 11, 423-442.

Lobao, L., Gray, M., Cox, K. and Kitson, M., 2018. The shrinking state? Understanding the assault on the public sector. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 11(3), pp.389-408.

McCabe, A. and Phillimore, J., 2012. All Change? Surviving Below the Radar: community groups and activities in a Big Society.

Nichols, G. (2013). The psychological contract of volunteers: A new research agenda. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 24, 986- 1005.

O’Toole, M., & Grey, C. (2016). We can tell them to get lost, but we won’t do that: Cultural control and resistance in voluntary work. Organization Studies, 37, 55-75.

Pearce, J. (1993). Volunteers: The organisational behaviour of unpaid workers. London, England: Routledge.

Preston, J. B., & Brown, W. A W. A. (2004). Commitment and performance of nonprofit board members. Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 15, 221-238.

Sanders, M. L., & McClellan, J. G. (2014). Being business-like while pursuing a social mission: Acknowledging the inherent tensions in US nonprofit organizing. Organization, 21, 68-89.

Silard, A. (2018). Emotions for a cause: How the emotion expression of nonprofit leaders produces follower engagement and loyalty. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 47(2), 304-324.

Vantilborgh, T., Bidee, J., Pepermans, R., Willems, J., Huybrechts, G., & Jegers, M. (2012). Volunteers’ psychological contracts: Extending traditional views. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 41, 1072-1091.

Ward, J. and Greene, A.M. (2018) ‘Too much of a good thing? The emotional challenges of managing affective commitment in voluntary work’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. Vol. 47(6) 1155–1177.

Convenor biographies

Jenna Ward is Professor of Work, Organisation and Emotion and Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law at Coventry University. Jenna’s research focuses on exploring emotionality within organisations, organising, and managing. Prioritising marginalised voices, Jenna employs and develops innovative arts-based research methods that complement her ethnographically informed research designs to observe and probe beyond the surface of both organisations and individual experiences of work. Areas of interest include: emotional labour, dirty work, emotional dirty work, visual and arts-based methods, creative industries, health care, death work and the management and organisation of voluntary work and volunteers.

Anne-marie Greene is Professor of Work and Diversity and Research Impact Lead at the School for Business and Society, University of York. She is Chair of the Standing Conference on Organisational Symbolism (SCOS) and Co-Convenor of the Gender and Employment Study Group of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association (ILERA). Anne-marie researches equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in theory and practice. A particular research interest is the interface between work, life, family and community, especially where a sense of calling, mission or activism is required. This often concerns areas of work that stand outside of the standard employment relationship, and which are less formally regulated, bringing with them challenges of management policy and practice and issues of inequality. Research projects have involved volunteer managers and volunteers, clergy, actors, freelance creatives, diversity consultants and trade union representatives. Anne-marie is Artistic Director of the Criterion Theatre, Coventry, a volunteer-run charity and holds a position on the People Committee of the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry.

Ruth Leonard is Chair of the UK’s Association of Volunteer Managers whose day job is Head of Volunteering Development and Operations at Macmillan Cancer Support. She is the co-author of a recently published book on Volunteer Involvement: an Introduction to Theory and Practice. For Ruth, volunteer management is about empowering and enabling people to bring creativity and ingenuity to a solution to make a difference in their community. Her current professional role is to consider strategically where volunteering can add value to developing solutions and to ensure a supportive infrastructure so people who want to give their time can have a quality experience. Having been involved in volunteer management for over 2 decades she has significant experience at providing leadership on involving and engaging people and is committed to ensuring others are able to develop these skills. She has written and spoken about volunteering for diverse publications and events, including chairing conferences on volunteer management and is regularly called upon to provide her practitioner expertise and as a research consultant. https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ruthbleonard @struthyb

Convenors and affiliations

Max Visser (Radboud University, the Netherlands) max.visser@ru.nl

Lynne Andersson (Temple University, U.S.A) lynne.andersson@temple.edu

About

To say that we currently live in a period of major global challenges may be a gross understatement. As we write this in the Winter of 2023, the Covid pandemic is still lurking in the background, having unveiled a major crisis in global public health. Climate and ecological problems – as evidenced in rampant wildfires in the western U.S., record floods in Nigeria and Pakistan, innumerable ‘storms of the century’ and record temperatures in nearly every part of the world – are growing in number and scope, with no viable systemic solutions proposed or enacted yet. Armies clash into one another in Ukraine, throwing food and energy supply chains across the world in disarray. The accuracy and credibility of information shared in nearly every media modality is under question, thanks in large part to the influence of privatized media platforms that give voice to purveyors of misinformation. Even as the forces of nationalism, fascism and socialism offer somewhat competing narratives, neoliberal capitalism and financialization still reign as the prevailing ideology justifying exploitive practices against nature and people, held supreme under the guise of the purportedly innate human values of individual and market freedom.

In all of these challenges, the role of organizations is crucial. They are causes of these challenges (e.g., fossil fuel corporations, arms manufacturers, private equity firms, technology monopolies, investment banks, tax and management consultancy firms, armies, militias), part of possible solutions (e.g., public sector organizations, NGO’s, international treaty organizations, labor unions, social enterprises, political and social activist groups, cooperatives), or a bit of both (e.g., pharmaceutical firms, U.N. task forces, religious groups, public-private initiatives, educational institutions, think tanks) (Adler, 2022; Ferreras et al., 2022).

This shared responsibility (for better or worse) for global challenges necessitates new organizational forms and ideas that diminish organizations’ ecological footprint, financial and fiscal irresponsibility and oppressive management and work practices. However, four decades of neoliberal capitalism have made it increasingly difficult to imagine viable alternatives to the current system (Fisher, 2020). To a large extent, this is due to capitalism’s ability to appropriate the criticisms levelled towards it, by stripping them of their revolutionary potential, and by commodifying them into marketable products, all in the service of the ‘imperative to unlimited accumulation of capital’ (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2018, p. 4; Frank, 1997).

This holds particularly true for the Counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, an anti-establishment movement in which young people across the Western world aimed at a ‘social and psychological revolution of almost inconceivable magnitude,’ experimenting with new ways of living, working and organizing (Fisher, 2021, p. 101). Sensing the dangers this movement posed to the political, social and economic ‘established order of domination’ (Marcuse, 1966, p. 93), authorities in Europe and the U.S. were quick to squash it by brutal and prolonged police and military force, in conjunction with a bureaucratized moral panic (Barbrook & Cameron, 2015; Curtis, 2002).

In response, in the course of the 1970s the Counterculture movement seemingly gave up on revolutionary political, social and economic change and turned inward toward individual, self-directed development and growth. This was easily coopted by neoliberal capitalism and transformed into a commercialized individuality, via an enormous self-help, wellness, optimization and ‘happiness’ industry (Cederström, 2018; Frank, 1997). Alternatively, furthering African-American emancipation and liberation, the Black Panther Party organized itself on a para-military basis in order to actively fight police brutality and suppression, while it also set up school and various social service and community programs (Davis, 2016; Kitchell, 1990).

This brutal suppression and quick appropriation (and the prolonged hatred conservatives still feel towards the Counterculture) may be seen as indications that a real threat to the capitalist system was involved. Therefore, this Counterculture movement is an important source to look for alternative and new forms of organizing that could take on current global challenges. This may be particularly true for the Counterculture movement on the U.S. West Coast in the late 1960s, not only because it was in many ways the vanguard of ‘hippie radicalism,’ but also because it was the birthplace of the internet and world wide web. It gave rise to ‘the Californian ideology… a bizarre mish-mash of hippie anarchism and economic liberalism beefed up with lots of technological determinism’ (Barbrook & Cameron, 2015, p. 20; Uluorta & Quill, 2022).

Over the course of the 1970s, the liberal and technological elements became dominant, reflecting West Coast anti-statist and individualistic sentiments in response to state brutality. The hippie anarchists of the 1960s, however, had looked at the ‘gift economy as the complete antithesis of capitalism… Rejecting work-as-commodity, they proclaimed a new organizing principle for their utopian society:… work-as-gift, as an ‘alternative form of collective labor’ on the Net’ (Barbrook & Cameron, 2015, p. 48). While these ideas of a ‘hi-tech gift economy’ and ‘cyber communism’ eventually succumbed to platform capitalism (Uluorta & Quill, 2022), they reveal that, in these early stages, important liberating alternatives were ascribed to the Net, in line with the experiments with new ways of living, working and organizing at that time.

More broadly, the hippie anarchists sought to disconnect human desire and creativity from the concrete objects and artifacts offered by capitalism, because these served as focal points of temporary gratification and cathexis that kept libidinal desire in check. Instead, inspired by such diverse philosophers and psychoanalysts as Nietzsche, Deleuze, Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich, they came to view desire as a ‘continuous, creative force expressing productive and assembling characteristics… [beyond] the flow of production… and surplus accumulation’ (Haynes, 2021, pp. 1178-1179; Cederström, 2018; Curtis, 2002).

Recently, all the elements discussed so far converge in notions of post-capitalist desire, as ‘disarticulating technology and desire from capital’ (Fisher, 2012, p. 135; 2021), and in particular in ‘acid communism’ (Colquhoun, 2018; Fisher, 2020). The late Mark Fisher intended the latter term to be both a ‘provocation and a promise… It points to something that, at one point, seemed inevitable, but which now appears impossible: the convergence of class consciousness, socialist-feminist consciousness-raising and psychedelic consciousness, the fusion of new social movements with a communist project, an unprecedented aestheticization of everyday life’ (Fisher, 2020, pp. 22-23). He specifically called for rediscovering and reassessing the ‘experiments in democratic socialism and libertarian communism that were efflorescing at the end of the Sixties and the beginning of the Seventies’ (ibid., p. 10), and asked the question that also underlies this stream: ‘what if the Counterculture was only a stumbling beginning, rather than the best that could be hoped for? What if the success of neoliberalism was a not an indication of the inevitability of capitalism, but a testament to the scale of the threat posed by the specter of a society which could be free?’ (ibid., p. 19).

In this stream, we heed this call of Fisher and others and intend to unearth the potential organizational forms, ideas and practices that took shape in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before they were suppressed and coopted by the ‘established order of domination’ of that time. So, in the spirit of the ICMS 2023 pleas for ‘affirmative engagement with alternative practices of organization’ and to ‘problematize sedimented conferencing practices,’ we invite you to our live, non-hybrid Love Shack (Sadler, 2012) to participate in constructing ‘an alternative model of desire that can compete with the one pushed by capital’s libidinal technicians’ (Fisher, 2013).

Submission guidelines

We welcome papers by MOS scholars, historians, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, information and other scientists that provide concrete descriptions and/or analyses of these radical new forms of organizing and working. We are interested in the interplay between hippie radicalism and the birth of internet and the various social and technological utopias that came out of it (e.g., Whole Earth Catalog, WELL, and more recently Bastiani’s call for ‘fully automated luxury communism’). We welcome voices from other parts of the world, for example from the near-revolution in France in May 1968, or the ‘Provo’ movement in Amsterdam in 1970. We want to hear more about the radical ideas behind hippie radicalism, how they related to post-Freudian, critical and feminist theories (e.g., Wilhelm Reich, Marcuse, Davis, Roszak) and how these in turn reverberated in Western thinking (e.g., Charles Reich, Deleuze & Guattari, Foucault, Hardt & Negri), and via that in new ways in MOS.

The papers should be submitted via email to the two convenors before 31^st March, 2023. They may include full (research) papers, essays, or short papers reflecting work in progress. Notifications of acceptance are sent via email on 14 April.

References

Adler, P.S. (2022). Capitalism, socialism, and the climate crisis. Organization Theory, 3(1), 1-16.

Barbrook, R., with Cameron, A. (2015). The internet revolution: From dot-com capitalism to cybernetic communism. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.

Boltanski, L. & Chiapello, E. (2018 [1999]). The new spirit of capitalism (new updated ed.) (transl. G. Elliott). London: Verso.

Cederström, C. (2018). The happiness fantasy. Cambridge: Polity.

Colquhoun, M. (2018). Acid communism. Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy, 38(2), 1-3.

Curtis, A. (2002). The century of the self. Documentary series. London: BBC.

Davis, A.Y. (Ed.) (2016 [1971]). If they come in the morning: Voices of resistance. London: Verso.

Ferreras, I., Battilana, J. & Méda, D. (Eds.) (2022). Democratize work: The case for reorganizing the economy. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Fisher, M. (2012). Post-capitalist desire. In F. Campagna & E. Campiglio (Eds.), What we are fighting for: A radical collective manifesto (pp. 131-138). London: Pluto Press.

Fisher, M. (2013). How to kill a zombie: Strategizing the end of neoliberalism. openDemocracy, July 18 (https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/how-to-kill-zombie-strategizing-end-of-neoliberalism/, accessed 2 January 2023).

Fisher, M. (2020). Acid communism. London: Pattern Books.

Fisher, M. (2021). Postcapitalist desire: The final lectures. London: Repeater.

Frank, T. (1997). The conquest of cool: Business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Haynes, P. (2021). Is there a future for accelerationism? Journal of Organizational Change Management, 34(6), 1175-1187.

Kitchell, M. (1990). Berkeley in the Sixties. Documentary. Berkeley: Kitchell Films.

Marcuse, H. (1966). Eros and civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud (2^nd ed.). Boston: Beacon Press.

Sadler, S. (2012). The dome and the shack: The dialectics of hippie enlightenment. In E. Boal, J. Stone, M. Watts & C. Winslow (Eds.), West of Eden: Communes and utopia in Northern California.(pp. 72-81). Oakland: PM Press/Retort.

Uluorta, H.M. & Quill, L. (2022). The Californian ideology revisited. In E. Armano, M. Briziarelli & E. Risi (Eds.), Digital platforms and algorithmic subjectivities (pp. 21-31). London: University of Westminster Press.

Convenor biographies

Max Visser is Associate Professor of Management, Accounting & Organization, Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. More information about his research interests can be found on: https://www.ru.nl/en/people/visser-m.

Lynne Andersson is Associate Professor of Business, Society & Ethics, Fox School of Business and Management, Temple University, Philadelphia, U.S.A.. More information about her research interests can be found on: https://www.fox.temple.edu/directory/lynne-m-andersson-landerss.

Convenors and affiliations

Michel Ajzen (UCLouvain, Belgium)

Michal Izak (University of Chester, UK)

Stefanie Reissner (University of Essex, UK)

About

The new flexibility paradigm (Bauman, 2000) marks an era of ‘turbulent unpredictability’ (Smith, 2010) and weakens an individual and collective sense of workplace security. In particular, the spread of flexible working practices – ranging from work schedule flexibility to teleworking but also including office design and the proliferation of co-working spaces – brought new challenges due to the variability in location and time as well as the increasing dependence on technologies (Kingma, 2018, Blagoev et al., 2019; Aroles et al., 2019).

More recently, the prolonged ‘social experiment’ involving en masse introduction of flexible and distant working practices due to Covid-19 lockdown provided a fitting example of these trends, exposing diverse organizational approaches and practices to ensure productivity of now largely dispersed workforces.

Beyond the pandemic, such practices are expected not only to stick (Barrero et al., 2021; Thulin & Vilhelmson, 2021) but to become a ‘new normal’, depicted by hybrid forms of work that are often tied with a particular vision of the ‘Future of Work’ (Schlogl et al., 2021). In turn, taken-for-granted beliefs on remote working patterns and work management practices are deeply shaken and ‘managing at a distance’ becomes a murky ground. Firstly, even before the pandemic, managing remotely went beyond the well-rehearsed direct managerial control achieved through introduction of coercive measures and included tacit controls implied by the introduction of new technologies (e.g. Broadfoot, 2001; Mazmanian et al., 2013). Through managerial rhetoric and socio-material artifacts, workers are expected to be flexible, connected, and empowered (Richardson & McKenna, 2014; Thorne, 2015, Paltrinieri, 2017). As a result, the locus of control may equally be shifting away from ‘the centre’ of the organization towards now self-controlling individuals who may, however, feel ‘constrained by their work despite being able to manage it largely outside of direct managerial and peer control’ (Putnam et al., 2014, p. 416; Michel, 2011).

Yet, secondly, as workplaces become less fixed (Halford, 2005), less clearly defined (Herod et al., 2007) and more virtual (Hafermalz & Riemer, 2021), more freedom may be left to self-governing individuals (Mackenzie & McKinlay, 2021) and less oversight may be desired by organizations to save on effort and expenditure of control. Indeed, in the remote work context the dichotomic construal of control, discipline and freedom requires problematization (Raffnsøe et al., 2019). In this vein, increased spatio-temporal flexibility may ultimately provide a fitting ground for shaping the ‘ideal’ or ‘model worker’ (see Hancock & Spicer, 2011) who goes above and beyond contractual obligations towards their employer. Increasingly absent from the organizational radar, employees working ‘freely’ from an increased distance may feel ‘empowered’ to ‘just keep going’, going beyond what could have been formally expected (Cooper & Lu, 2019). Indeed, they have been found to invest significant effort in remaining constantly ‘visible’ (Leonardi & Treem, 2021), due to the self-regulated need to extend the spatial and temporal boundaries of their work, to ‘stand out’ and distinguish themselves (Hartner-Tiefenthaler et al., 2021), out of fear of being ‘left out’ (Hafermalz, 2021) and craving the recognition of being an ‘ideal’ or a ‘model worker’.

However, the post-crisis normalization of flexible and/or ‘hybrid’ working patterns requires additional scholarly attention. Conceptually, newly labelled ‘hybrid’ working arrangements require clearer definition and distinction from more established concepts of flexible and remote working, which we invite in this call. Empirically, the norms and practices associated with these working arrangements invite us to question how the shaping of this ‘ideal worker’ evolves. For instance, while the spread of spatio-temporal flexibility practices was found to be underpinned by a managerial will to shape a new flexible, connected and empowered worker (e.g., Ajzen, 2021; Richardson & McKenna, 2014), recent studies point at a change in the meaning of and attitude to work more generally (see Adissa et al., 2021), suggesting an individual quest for more freedom by managing times, spaces and ICTs to improve one’s working and living conditions. Simultaneously, enforced remote working may have led to increasing individualization of work and affects social relationships and communities at the workplace (Ajzen & Taskin, 2021), changes in identity at work (Hennekam et al., 2021), and/or the feeling of belonging to a profession or an organization (e.g., Hassard & Morris, 2022).

In the spirit of critically exploring the processes and practices by which new ideal workers norms emerge, we invite the following types of contributions:

* Individual-level analyses, including

o The meanings of and implications for work and employment in a post-covid fluid / flexible / hybrid working context (e.g. attitude-to-work and centrality of work)

o Flexible and/or hybrid working patterns and practices and their implications for work-life balance and mental and physical wellbeing

o Subjectification processes that lead to the development of individual sets of norms shaping working hours, work intensity, outputs, etc.

* Group-level analyses, including

o The implications of fluid / flexible / hybrid forms of working for social dynamics and identity at and identification with work

o Collective shaping processes of the new ideal worker

o Critical discussions of autonomy and/or control and in fluid / flexible / hybrid working

* Organization-level analyses, including

o Spatial and/or temporal perspectives on fluid / flexible / hybrid working practices, including office design and the development of institutional co-working spaces

Recognizing that it is not always possible to distinguish these levels, we also invite more holistic analyses that critically explore cross-level dynamics, for example where governmentality and subjectification meet.

We particularly encourage conceptual contributions, empirical research using innovative methodological approaches as well as interdisciplinary work, especially sociological and/or technology and innovation angles.

Submission guidelines

Submissions will be in the form of extended abstracts of 1000 words (references not included) and will briefly state in 100 words how the submission is suitable for the sub-theme. Extended abstracts should be submitted to michel.ajzen@uclouvain.be not later than March, 31. Convenors would prefer to favour the ‘in-person format’ but sub-theme sessions might be run in a hybrid format.

References

Adissa, T.A., Ogbonnaya, C. & Adekoya O.D. (2021). Remote working and employee engagement: A qualitative study of British workers during the pandemic. Information, Technology and People. Epub ahead of print 30 August 2021. DOI 10.1108/ITP-12-2020-0850.

Ajzen, M. & Taskin, L. (2021). The re-regulation of working communities and relationships in the context of flexwork: A spacing identity approach. Information and Organization, 31(3), DOI 10.1016/j.infoandorg.2021.100364.

Ajzen, M. (2021). From de-materialization to re-materialization: A social dynamics approach to new ways of working. In: Mitev, N., Aroles, J., Stephenson K.A., Malaurent, J. (Eds.). New Ways of Working. Organizations and Organizing in the Digital Age (Technology, Work and Globalization), Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, p. 205-233.

Aroles, J., Mitev, N. & de Vaujany, F.-X. (2019). Mapping themes in the study of new work practices. New Technology, Work and Employment, 34(3): 285-299.

Barrero, J. M., Bloom, N. & Davis, S. (2021). Why working from home will stick, NBER Working Paper No. 28731. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.

Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Blagoev, B., Costas, J., & Kärreman, D. (2019). ‘We are all herd animals’: Community and organizationality in coworking spaces. Organization, 26(6): 894-916.

Broadfoot, K. J. (2001). When the cat's away, do the mice play? Control/autonomy in the virtual workplace. Management Communication Quarterly, 15(1): 110–14.

Cooper, C. L., & Lu, L. (2019). Excessive availability for work: Good or bad? Charting underlying motivations and searching for game-changers. Human Resource Management Review, 29(4), 1–13.

Hafermalz, E. & Riemer, K. (2020). Interpersonal connectivity work: Being there with and for geographically distant others. Organization Studies, 41(12):1627-1648.

Hafermalz, E. (2021). Out of the Panopticon and into Exile: Visibility and control in distributed new culture organizations. Organization Studies, 42(5): 697-717.

Halford, S. (2005). Hybrid workspace: Re-spatialisations of work, organisation and management. New Technology, Work and Employment, 20(1), 19-33.

Hancock, P. & Spicer, A. (2011). Academic architecture and the constitution of the new model worker. Culture and Organization, 17(2), 91–105

Hartner-Tiefenthaler, M., Goisauf, M., Gerdenitsch, C. & Koeszegi, S. (2021). Remote working in a public bureaucracy: Redeveloping practices of managerial control when out of sight. Frontiers in Psychology, 12(1), 1-12.

Hassard, J. & Morris, J. (2022). The extensification of managerial work in the digital age: Middle managers, spatiotemporal boundaries and control. Human Relations, 75(9): 1647–1678.

Hennekam, S. Ladge, J.J. & Powell, G.N. (2021). Confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic: How multi-domain work-life shock events may result in positive identity change, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 130: 103621.

Herod, A., Rainnie, A. & McGrath-Champ, S. (2007). Working space: Why incorporating the geographical is central to theorizing work and employment practices. Work, Employment and Society, 21(2): 247–264.

Kingma, S. (2018). New ways of working (NWW): Work space and cultural change in virtualizing organizations. Culture and Organization, 25(5):1-24

Leonardi, P. & Treem, J. (2020). Behavioral Visibility: A new paradigm for organization studies in the age of digitization, digitalization, and datafication. Organization Studies, 41(12): 1601–1625.

Mackenzie, E. & McKinlay, A. (2021). Hope labour and the psychic life of cultural work. Human Relations, 74(11): 1841-1863.

Mazmanian, M., Orlikowski, W. J., & Yates, J. (2013). The autonomy paradox: The implications of mobile email devices for knowledge professionals. Organization Science, 24(5): 1337–1357.

Michel, A. (2011). Transcending socialization: A nine-year ethnography of the body? Role in organizational control and knowledge workers’ transformation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 56(3): 325-368.

Paltrienieri, L. (2017). Managing subjectivity: Neoliberalism, human capital and empowerment, Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 10(4): 459-471.

Putnam, L. L., Myers K. M. & Gailliard B., M. (2014). Examining the tensions in workplace flexibility and exploring options for new directions. Human Relations, 67(4): 413–40.

Raffnsøe, S., Mennicken, A., & Miller, P. (2019). The Foucault effect in organization studies. Organization Studies, 40(2): 155–182.

Richardson, J. & McKenna, S. (2014). Reordering spatial and social relations: A case study of professional and managerial flexworkers. British Journal of Management, 25(4): 724–736.

Schlogl, L., Weiss, E.W., & Prainsack, B. (2021). Constructing the ‘Future of Work’: An analysis of he policy discourse, New Technology, Work and Employment, 36(3), 307-326.

Smith, V. (2010). Enhancing employability: Human, cultural, and social capital in an era of turbulent unpredictability. Human Relations, 63(2): 279–300.

Thorne, K. (2005). Designing virtual organizations? Themes and trends in political and organizational discourses. Journal of Management Development, 24(7): 580-607.

Thulin, E. & Vilhelmson, B. (2021). Pacesetters in contemporary telework: How smartphones and mediated presence reshape the time–space rhythms of daily work. New Technology, Work and Employment, 37(2):250-269.

Convenor biographies

Michel Ajzen, PhD, is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Organizations Studies and HRM at UCLouvain (Belgium) with an interest in the interaction between the ‘New ways of Working’ practices, social relations at work, working communities, work-life balance, and sustainable work. His research has been published in several book chapters and journals such as Information and Organization.

Michal Izak, PhD, is Professor in Organization Studies at Chester Business School, University of Chester (UK). His research interests include flexible working discourses and their ideological underpinnings, and ethnographic and narrative approaches to organizational analysis. He published academic papers in Human Relations and Organization Studies among others and organized and co-organized international conferences and conference streams.

Stefanie Reissner, PhD, is Professor of Work and Organization Studies at Essex Business School (UK) with an interest in identity, narrative / storytelling, and interpretive work / sensemaking which she has studied in the context of flexible working. Her research has been published in high-quality journals, such as Work, Employment & Society, Journal of Business Ethics, European Management Review, and Public Administration.

Convenors and affiliations

Laura Bierema (University of Georgia, USA) bierema@uga.edu

Jamie Callahan (University of Durham, UK) jamie.callahan@durham.ac.uk

Chang-kyu Kwon, (Illinois University, USA) kwonc@illinois.edu

Clare Rigg (University of Suffolk, UK) c.rigg@uos.ac.uk

Sally Sambrook (University of Bangor, UK) sally.sambrook@bangor.ac.uk

Jim Stewart (Liverpool John Moores University, UK) J.D.Stewart@ljmu.ac.uk

Kiran Trehan (University of York, UK) kiran.trehan@york.ac.uk

About

Human resource development (HRD) is concerned with learning at, for and outside work (Sambrook, 2005). Critical human resource development (CHRD) seeks to question normative management assumptions about learning, training and development (Ross, et al, 2022; Stewart, et al, 2014). It aspires to challenge power; to seek equity, justice and emancipation in organization practices through all forms of learning and development (Callahan et al, 2015). CHRD academic community members are concerned to make a positive difference in the world as academics, through their teaching (as subversive activity) (hooks, 1994); through industry and community collaboration and advocation of critical performativity (subversive activism) (Spicer, Alvesson & Kärreman, 2009, 2016); and through critique of the business of sites of HRD (at work, in business schools and at conference) (Callahan & Elliott, 2019; Contu, 2018).

We illustrate these areas of CHRD activity in the figure below and invite submissions from established / emerging / aspiring practitioner and academic activists, around any of the three elements. Since CHRD is concerned not just with critique but with action that might follow the conferring within a conference, we place ‘Confer-action’ at the centre of the figure:

We invite submissions from established/emerging/aspiring practitioner and academic activists, possibly around the three elements:

1. The ‘business’ of conferences: critique of the ‘business’ of academic conferences in which we participate and reasons that compel us.  This might include themes such as:
   • Managerialism in and marketisation of higher education and pressures to ‘sell’, commercialise and commodify our academic knowledge
   • Knowledge elitism – privileging of certain types of knowledge; denigration of traditional knowledges
   • Inclusion/exclusion through dominance of the English language
   • Critical takes on theorising
   • Alternative forms of conferencing (e.g., unconference, virtual conferences) to disrupt traditional hierarchies of knowledge production
2. Teaching as subversive activity: exploration of the possibilities, pitfalls and politics of subversive activism, with associated rewards and risks, including for us as scholar. This might include topics such as:
   • Classroom interventions that challenge unspoken assumptions, hegemonies and managerialism
   • Pedagogies that provoke criticality and activism
   • Relations between critical learning and radical practice
   • Tensions, risks and rewards
   • Critiquing the ‘tyranny of technology’ in educational spaces
3. Critical HRD scholars and scholarship: the role of CHRD in all of this and how we navigate this intersectionality. This might include:

• Possibilities to ‘sneak in’ alternative structures or systems to disrupt capitalist hegemony
• Creating spaces to give voice in ways that empower those who are marginalized
• HRD that counters complicity with managerialism e.g. with groups such as trades unions, precariat, environmental groups
• Scholarly activism – values, reasons to challenge, ways of being an activist
• Trojan horse activities: leveraging neoliberal schemes or assumptions to sneak in systemic/structural changes in organizations

Submission guidelines

Hybrid format.

Abstracts should be sent by 31^st March 2023 to J.D.Stewart@ljmu.ac.uk

References

Callahan, J., Stewart, J., Rigg, C., Sambrook, S. & Trehan, K. (eds). 2015. Realising Critical Human Resource Development. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Callahan, J. & Elliott, C.2019 Fantasy spaces and emotional derailment: Reflections on failure in academic activism. Organization, 27, 3, 506-514.

Contu, A. 2018. The point is to change it – Yes, but in what direction and how? Intellectual activism as a way of ‘walking the talk’ of critical work in business schools. Organization, 25(2), 282– 293.

hooks, B. 1994. Teaching to Transgress. New York: Routledge.

Ross, C., Stewart, J. Nichol, L., Elliott, C. and Sambrook, S. 2022 ‘Sustaining the critical in CHRD in higher education institutions: the impact of new public management and implications for HRD’ (Human Resource Development International.

Sambrook S. 2005. Factors influencing the context and process of work-related learning: synthesising findings from two research projects. Human Resource Development International, 8 (1) 101-119.

Spicer, A., Alvesson, M., & Kärreman, D. 2009. Critical performativity: The unfinished business of critical management studies. Human Relations, 62, 537– 560.

Spicer, A., Alvesson, M., & Kärreman, D. 2016. Extending critical performativity. Human Relations, 69, 225– 249.

Stewart, J. Callahan, J., Rigg, C., Sambrook, S. and Trehan, K. 2014 Guest Editors and Guest Editorial ‘Special Issue on Critical HRD’, Human Resource Development International, 17 (4), 379-383.

Convenor biographies

Laura L. Bierema is Professor at, University of Georgia, College of Education, program of Adult Learning, Leadership, and Organization Development. Her research interests include workplace learning, career development, women’s development, organization development, executive coaching, leadership, and critical human resource development.

Jamie L. Callahan is Professor of Organization Studies and Ethics at Durham University. She is the former Editor of Human Resource Development Review and current Co-Editor of International Journal of Management Reviews. Her research addresses issues of power and privilege in organized contexts, leading her to explore marginalized groups’ experiences of leadership, learning, and organizational transformation.

Chang-kyu Kwon is Assistant Professor of Human Resource Development at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is the current Chair of the Critical HRD SIG of the Academy of HRD and was the recipient of the 2022 Richard A. Swanson Research Excellence Award.

Clare Rigg is Professor of Leadership and Management at the University of Suffolk, U.K. Her academic career has prioritized teaching and research that is close to practice and is concerned with enabling students to make a critical impact in their organizations and communities. She has co-led numerous critical HRD tracks and publications and is currently Associate Editor of AMLE.

Sally Sambrook is Emerita Professor of Human Resource Development at Bangor Business School.  Sally was a founding member of the University Forum for HRD and served as Board member of the American Academy of HRD.  Sally has co-led numerous critical HRD conference streams, publishes widely and holds various editorial roles

Jim Stewart is Professor of Human Resource Development at Liverpool Business School, UK. He is former Chair and currently President of the University Forum for HRD. Jim is co-editor of journal special issues, including four based on Critical HRD streams at the Critical Management Studies as well as the UFHRD/AHRD European conferences

Kiran Trehan is Pro-Vice Chancellor for Partnerships and Engagement and Professor of Entrepreneurship at The University of York, UK. She is a key contributor to debates on leadership, enterprise development and diversity in small firms and has extensively published in high quality journal, policy reports, books and book chapters in the field.

Convenors and affiliations

Fredrik Weibull (Hanken School of Economics, Finland)

Huw Fearnall-Williams (Nottingham-Trent University, UK)

Jennifer Robinson (Loughborough University, UK)

Peter Watt (Lancaster University, UK)

About

In November 2022, Collins Dictionary announced that its ‘word of the year’ was ‘permacrisis’. Collins explained that they chose this word because it ‘sums up quite succinctly how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people’ (Sherwood, 2022). However, as the dictionary’s definition of the word suggests, permacrisis does not simply refer to the events and experiences of one particularly awful year, but the culmination of ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity’. It therefore describes our own historical moment as a period which can be traced across various crises that have been of international concern in the first two decades of the 21^st Century: global financial crises, ecological collapse, political upheavals (of various kinds), the Covid-19 pandemic, the potential of a return to war in Europe and South-East Asia, ever-increasing disparities in wealth and income, social divisions sewn by so-called ‘identity politics’ and ‘culture wars’, as well as various ‘threats’ to national and international peace. The term therefore acknowledges that among the main events of the 21^st century have been the proliferation of various risks entering into our daily lives. This is despite the beginning of the 21^st Century being marked by the promise that liberal-democratic capitalism (and managerialism) had triumphed over the social, political, and economic conflicts that defined the previous century.

In the context of these unsettling, complex and perpetually uncertain developments, we suggest that the 2023 International Critical Management Studies Conference presents a pertinent opportunity to reconsider what we mean by ‘risk’ – a key concept that invariably will be entwined with these phenomena: what ‘risk’ refers to, where it can and can’t be located, who bears the burden of risk, and who speaks of it – how and in what ways? These fundamental questions will allow us to reconsider how businesses, organisations, societies, individuals, and groups may approach managing risk, both inside and outside organisational contexts. Indeed, the word ‘critical’ is etymologically rooted in the ‘judgement’ of ‘the nature of a crisis, in a condition of extreme doubt or danger’ and therefore applies as much to the individual citizens and subjects of the 21^st Century, as it does to the institutions that bring individuals together into various forms of organisation.

With the intensified encroachment of risks of various kinds continuing to enter all aspects of modern life, we suggest that now is a crucial moment for critical management and organisation scholars to rethink and challenge the conceptualisation of ‘risk’ and ‘risk management’ as they have emerged and developed as discrete areas of inquiry in MOS as well as in the wider social sciences and humanities. Indeed, a defining aspect of the interdisciplinary field of CMS (and one which sets it apart from MOS more generally) is the potential position to think and practice ‘against management’ but for organising (Parker, 2002). We seek to extend this formulation towards problematising the very ‘management’ of risk by opening the concept up to all domains of management practice and thought.

The aim of this stream, therefore, is not to further develop contributions to the domain of ‘risk management’ as such, but to provide a space in which scholars from a diverse array of backgrounds can consider their focus of interest in relation to ‘risk management’ and the various ‘risks’ that dominate their respective domains of inquiry. Our aim is to provide a platform on which a broad network of scholars can begin critiquing and exploring the limits of risk as an ever-present concept. This is particularly timely as scholarly and practitioner interest in discourses of risk – its ‘assessment’ and ‘management’ – has proliferated to unprecedented levels in recent years. Indeed, there appears to be no organisational field or domain that is left untouched by ‘risk’ and ‘risk management’s’ intrusion.

This pervasive interest is a key reason for the need for risk’s re-appraisal. Additionally, alongside its managerial and organisational manifestations is the recognition that some of the most defining vocabularies for research and thinking in the social sciences have been cast in terms of risk itself. In the past half century we have witnessed key schools of thought and scholarship develop from the very concept of risk, including:  Cultural Theory of Risk (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1980; Douglas, 1966); Foucauldian perspectives (Castel, 1991; Foucault, 2000); and relatedly, the institutional and social arrangements leading to the ‘Risk Society’ perspective (Beck, 1992, 1986, 2008; Giddens, 1990). In expanding and extending upon his earlier ‘Audit Society’ thesis (Power, 1997), Power (2004, 2016) has systematically captured how ‘normal’ organisational practices of risk management have proliferated since the mid-1990s into a key constitutive part of ‘good’ governance. Moreover, serious questions have been raised about the central paradox of managing risk, where the active attempt to reduce, avoid and overcome ‘risk’ can actually lead to unintended consequences that may cause more ‘risk’ (Beck, 1992).

Considering the various ‘risks’, ‘dangers’, ‘crises’, ‘conflicts’ and ‘challenges’ named above, this sub-theme invites submissions from a diverse range of critical approaches - theoretical, thematic/conceptual, empirical, and methodological. We also encourage contributions from a range of disciplines to address areas of managerial concern that have so far not been considered in terms of risk. Therefore, contributions from any strand of CMS are welcome. These may consider the following questions: What is the future of the risk society? Is it possible to imagine a world beyond risk and its management (how would such a world look like)? What vocabularies and avenues of critique are available for those seeking to move beyond legacy approaches to risk? Is there an alternative to risk management? How might critical scholars engage practitioners, activists, and students around risk?

Rethinking Risk in the Context of the Conference Theme

In line with the general theme for the 2023 International Critical Management Studies Conference on ‘Being practically critical: Re-imagining possibilities for CMS, challenging the idea of a conference and (re)building our community of communities’, we encourage submissions that may themselves be interpreted as ‘risky’, ambitious in scope and radical in terms of thinking, writing, and presenting on this pervasive topic. We welcome papers that use any of a wide variety of theoretical and disciplinary lenses to reimagine and challenge what we might traditionally understand in terms of ‘risk’ and its management.

Call for Papers

We suggest that the pervasive nature of ‘risk’ calls for the reconsideration and critique of ‘risk management’s’ limits. We therefore encourage papers that address and extend critical analyses of various forms of ‘risk’. Our list is inevitably non-exhaustive; however, submissions may include the following topic areas:

• Alternative Approaches to Risk Management
• Neo-Liberalism and the Transformation of Risk
• The Ethics of Risk and Risk Management
• Ecological and Environmental Crises
• The Limits and Consequences of Legislating Against Risks (e.g., United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, COP27 etc.)
• Surveillance and Risk
• Entrepreneurship and the Celebration of Risk
• Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, and Machine Learning (as a means of overcoming and increasing Risks)
• Organizing for War and Peace (Risks associated with military, political and NGO contexts)
• Risk and Everyday Life (Health and Safety, Food Security, Identity Politics, Culture Wars etc.)
• Risk and Exploitation (e.g., Precarious Work, modern-day slavery, Human Rights etc.)
• Trust, Secrecy, Transparency and Risk
• Performance Management, People Analytics, and the Management of Risky Human Resources
• Emotions and Experiences of Risk
• Cultures of Fear and Affect
• The Risk of Positivity and Cultures of Well-being
• The Risks and Consequences of Technology
• The History and Legacy of Risk
• Risk and the Emergence of Resilience

While we encourage papers to be delivered in person, we are happy to receive submissions from those that cannot present in person subject to request. We therefore ask that you indicate your preference as part of your submitted abstract. 

Please submit abstracts for consideration to cmsbeyondrisk@gmail.com by the 31^st March 2023. Please ensure abstracts are no longer than 500 words (excluding references), so they can be included in the conference book of abstracts. We welcome prospective submissions from academics at all stages of study, and ideas at all stages of development. We also welcome longer papers that are under development (in addition to the 500-word abstract) for the purposes of consideration and feedback.

References

Beck, Ulrich. (2008). ‘Reframing Power in the Globalized World’, Organization Studies 29(5), 793–804. SAGE Publications Ltd.

Beck, Ulrich. (1986). Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

Beck, Ulrich. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.

Castel, Robert. (1991). ‘From Dangerousness to Risk’, in Graham. Burchell, Colin. Gordon, and Peter. Miller (eds) The Foucault effect: studies in governmentality: with two lectures by and an interview with Michel Foucault, pp. 281–298. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Douglas, Mary. (1966). Purity and Danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London: Routledge.

Chandler, David, and Julian Reid. (2016) The Neoliberal Subject: Resilience, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Rowman & Littlefield.

Dillon, Michael, and Julian Reid. (2009) The Liberal Way of War: Killing to Make Life Live. New York: Routledge.

Douglas, Mary., & Wildavsky, Aaron. (1980). Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press.

Foucault, Michel. (2000). ‘The Risks of Security’, in J.D. Faubion (ed.) Power, pp. 365–381. New York: New Press

Giddens, Anthony. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

O’Malley, Pat. ‘Resilient Subjects: Uncertainty, Warfare and Liberalism’. Economy and Society 39, no. 4 (November 2010): 488–509.

Parker, Martin. (2002) Against management: Organization in the age of managerialism. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Power, Michael. (2016). Riskwork: Essays on the Organizational Life of Risk Management. Oxford University Press.

Power, Michael. (1997). The Audit society : rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press.

Power, Michael. (2004). The Risk Management of Everything: Rethinking the Politics of Uncertainty. London: Demos.

Rose, Nikolas. ‘Governing Risky Individuals: The Role of Psychiatry in New Regimes of Control’. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 5, no. 2 (1998): 177–95.

Sherwood, Harriet. (2022). ‘“Sums up 2022”: Permacrisis chosen as Collins word of the year’, The Guardian, 1st November,  Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/nov/01/sums-up-2022-permacrisis-chosen-as-collins-word-of-the-year.

Shenhav, Yehouda. (1994). Manufacturing Uncertainty and Uncertainty in Manufacturing: Managerial Discourse and the Rhetoric of Organizational Theory. Science in Context, 7(2), 275–305.

Urry, John. (2005) “The Complexities of the Global.” Theory, Culture & Society 22, no. 5 (October): 235–54.

Verweij, Marco., & Thompson, Michael. (Eds.). (2006). Clumsy solutions for a complex world: Governance, politics, and plural perceptions. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Convenor biographies

Fredrik Weibull teaches and researches at the Department of Management & Organisation, Hanken School of Economics. His research focuses on understanding the history of management, work and organisation theory and draws on political and social theory, continental thought, history of ideas, war studies and military history.

Peter Watt is Lecturer in Organisation, Work and Technology at Lancaster University Management School. His research is focussed on understanding the social, cultural and philosophical foundations of management practice and thought.

Huw Fearnall-Williams is Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management at Nottingham Business School, NTU. His research interests include exploring cultural-historical shifts in management thinking and practice.

Jennifer Robinson is a Lecturer in Work and Organisation at Loughborough University. Her research interests surround the intersection between ideology and work in contemporary society.

Convenors and affiliations

Gloria Agyemang (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Amanze Ejiogu (Newcastle University)

Alpa Dhanani (Cardiff University)

Stephanie Perkiss (University of Wollongong, Australia)

About

Hybrid Stream

The last decade has brought considerable attention to the black and minority ethnic (BAME) community, the world over. In 2013, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement was born following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the police officer who fatally injured Trevon Martin (aged 17) and subsequently gained momentum with a crescendo in 2020 when George Floyd was murdered by police. The movement sparked protests across the globe with people of all ethnicities joining together demanding an end to what has been dubbed the ‘racism pandemic’. Fuelled by neoliberal policies that systematically ignore the structural barriers facing BAME communities, these out-groups continue to be disadvantaged, and often suffer from a disproportionately higher unemployment level, over-representation in the lowest skilled jobs and the greatest pay gaps (Perra, 2018). In addition, migrant communities have faced hostile policies from several Northern countries and the recent Russian – Ukraine war has brought to light the differential ways in which migrant communities are received. Moreover, in corporate contexts, advancements in issues of human rights, EDI practices and the like appear to have instituted little change and indeed sectors such as higher education and the third sector linked to ideals of social justice are also mired in practices of inequality and injustice.

In addition to the new and intensified forms of racism, we are also confronted with an adaptation in the expression of racism. Indeed, in our times, most democratic societies condemn the open and traditional forms of prejudice and racism. However, this has not led to a disappearance of traditional racist attitudes and behaviours, rather these have assumed more covert forms which masked themselves in rhetoric of “fairness” and “reverse discrimination” and, thus, become more socially acceptable. To cope with these, researches in the social sciences have developed new conceptions of racism such as modern racism (McConahay, 1986), symbolic racism (Sears and Henry, 2003), aversive racism (Dovidio and Gaertner, 2004), ambivalent racism (Fiske, 2011), cordial racism (Owensby, 2005) etc. However, research in business, management and accounting fields, progress has been much slower.

In the accounting field, while some progress has been made in focusing attention on issues closely related to race such as migrant communities there is a sense that these developments only scratch at the surface in terms of accounting’s relation to race and racial inequality. In fact, there is only a small stream of critical accounting research that has inquired specifically into accounting’s enrolment in society’s deeper structures of racial inequality (e.g. Davie, 2005; Dyball and Rooney, 2012; Hammond et al., 2012; Upton and Arrington, 2012). Reviewing this work over a 25 year period, Annisette and Prasad (2017, p. 6) reflect “whether critical accounting scholars by dint of their silence on the racial dramas of our times are part of that other chorus—the one that sings praise to the faded myth of a post-racial world”. While some authors have noted that the sub-field of environmental accounting has overshadowed accounting’s impact on society, others noted that the business, management and accounting literatures have prioritised gender over race and concluded “some inequalities seem to be taken more seriously than others” (Crewe and Fernando, 2006, p. 40).

In this stream, we make a call to the global community of scholars and practitioners to critically explore race and racial (in)equality in the context of business, management, accounting and accountability, broadly defined. We believe interdisciplinary approaches offer the opportunity to arrive at a rich understanding of the role of accounting and accountability in addressing the race agenda and research that identifies positive, meaningful, and implementable solutions is particularly encouraged. We encourage potential contributors to interpret this theme broadly to capture a variety of potential settings ranging from (but no restricted to) corporations, the accountancy profession and university settings to other forms of institutions such as the police force and charities, and neoliberalist and more recently populist government policies. We are also particularly keen on research that includes groups that have been historically underrepresented or are in silenced / vulnerable positions such as indigenous populations. Colleagues have scope to consider a diverse set of theoretical and methodological perspectives, and both encounters that cast light onto the darker side of accounting and organisational practices and result in uplifting stories are welcome.

Topics of interest may include but are not limited to:

• The modern corporation and anti-racist practices;
• Responsible governance and leadership in addressing issues of race;
• From HR to corporate boards: issues of EDI
• Accounting for the lived experiences of the marginalised and the vulnerable;
• Business and accounting participation in the colonial subjugation and exploitation of Africa, Asia, Indigenous communities etc.;
• Accounting and accountability for environmental and climate racism;
• Decolonising accounting and management;
• Modern slavery and race;
• New forms of racism and racial injustice;
• Resistance to racism and racial injustice;
• The play-out of neoliberalist and populist government policies in different quarters including education, immigration and healthcare;
• widening racial inequalities and reimagining the role of accounting at both the local and global levels;
• The play-out of discriminatory practices in justice oriented institutional forms such as the police force, non-profits and the health service;
• Corporate sustainability practices with a specific emphasis on race;
• Organisational responses to the murder of George Floyd and the attack on the Capitol by White supremacists; and
• Outcomes of standards and benchmarks to promote racial equality in particular sectors such as the accountancy profession and the higher education sector.

Submission guidelines

Papers for consideration should be submitted to Alpa Dhanani on dhananiav@cardiff.ac.uk by 31 March 2023. Decisions will be communicated with authors by 14 April 2023.

References

Annisette, M. and Prasad, A. (2017), “Critical accounting research in hyper-racial times”, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Vol. 43, pp. 5–19.

Crewe, E. and Fernando, P. (2006), “The elephant in the room: racism in representations, relationships and rituals”, Progress in Development Studies, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 40–54.

Davie, S.S.K. (2005), “The politics of accounting, race and ethnicity: a story of a Chiefly-based preferencing”, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Vol. 16 No. 5, pp. 551–577.

Dovidio, J.F. and Gaertner, S.L. (2004), “Aversive racism”, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 36, pp. 1–52.

Dyball, M.C. and Rooney, J. (2012), “Re-visiting the interface between race and accounting: Filipino workers at the Hamakua Mill Company, 1921–1939”, Accounting History, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 221–240.

Fiske, S.T. (2011), “Managing Ambivalent Prejudices: Smart-but-Cold and Warm-but-Dumb Stereotypes”, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 639 No. 1, pp. 33–48.

Hammond, T., Clayton, B.M. and Arnold, P.J. (2012), “An ‘unofficial’ history of race relations in the South African accounting industry, 1968–2000: Perspectives of South Africa’s first black chartered accountants”, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Vol. 23 No. 4–5, pp. 332–350.

McConahay, J.B. (1986), “Modern racism, ambivalence, and the modern racism scale.”, in Dovidio, J.F. and Gaertner, S.L. (Eds.), Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism, Academic Press, Orlando, FL, pp. 91–125.

Owensby, B. (2005), “Toward a history of Brazil’s" cordial racism": Race beyond liberalism”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 47 No. 2, pp. 318–347.

Perra, A. (2018), “Britain Today: Between State Racism and Ruthless Neoliberalism”, CounterPunch, 30 May, available at: https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/30/britain-today-between-state-racism-and-ruthless-neoliberalism/.

Sears, D.O. and Henry, P.J. (2003), “The origins of symbolic racism.”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 85 No. 2, p. 259.

Upton, D.R. and Arrington, C.E. (2012), “Implicit racial prejudice against African-Americans in balanced scorecard performance evaluations”, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Vol. 23 No. 4–5, pp. 281–297.

Convenor biographies

Gloria Agyemang is a Professor of Accounting at Royal Holloway, University of London and was prior Dean of the School. Gloria’s research interests are varied and include performance management issues and management control in public sector organisations and she has also published on race in accounting.

Amanze Ejiogu is Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University and he has research extensive experience in the areas of management accounting, public and third sector accounting, housing and governance, and accountability.

Alpa Dhanani is Reader at Cardiff University and her work has focused principally on non-profit accountability and in this context, she is now looking at issues of race and racial discrimination.

Stephanie Perkiss is Senior Lecturer at the University of Wollongong. Her current research projects are addressing issues related to social (in)equality, including climate change, migration, refuge, displacement and human rights, and Sustainable Development Goals. Stephanie is also looking into WikiRate a crowdsource database to enhance corporate transparency.

Convenors and affiliations

Jenny K Rodriguez (Work & Equalities Institute, University of Manchester, UK)

Elisabeth Anna Guenther (University of Vienna, Austria)

Salma Raheem (University of Liverpool, UK)

About

The idea of community/ies has been historically central to the ways in which feminisms throughout the globe have engaged in efforts to challenge inequalities and the status quo (e.g. Combahee River Collective,1979; Espinosa Miñoso, 2009; Knobblock & Kuokkanen, 2015). However, whilst many efforts capture the otherwise of feminist praxis, dominant narratives have generally prioritized particular understandings about feminism and its values, community building and solidarity. Against the backdrop of disruptive crises, the idea of (re)building, (re)generating and (re)articulating notions of community/ies is linked to reflecting on diverse meanings and scope of human struggle, emotive engagement, trauma and magnitude of loss in relation to shaping sustainable, socially-just futures in ways that emerge from multiple/diverse/broader feminist articulations.

In this respect, an important challenge for Critical Management Studies (CMS) is its relevance as a credible intellectual alternative that does not merely reproduce epistemic coloniality (Ibarra-Colado, 2006). This relates to critical propositions that are transformational beyond the performative promise implicit in affirmative engagement. It requires acknowledging epistemic violence and complicity of CMS in generating and perpetuating hierarchies of critical knowledge that shape dominant narratives about work, employment, management and organizations (see Nkomo, 2011; Swan, 2017; Liu, 2021), and moving away from critique and reflection that legitimizes intellectual complacency.

The stream is interested in multi-perspectival feminist praxis as the critical framework that would help us to imagine and realize non-hierarchical epistemic possibilities needed for building community/ies and create socially-just futures of work and employment. This involves engaging with the complexity of social life and going beyond homogeneous universal/ising understandings, instead centering situating understanding of concepts and praxis utilize as a departure point the multifaceted effects of race, gender and class. We see multi-perspectival feminist praxis as a means to challenge hegemonic intellectual power and knowledge production and articulate and drive actions for change.

In line with our approach, we invite contributions that use a broad and diverse range of tools to foster dialogical engagement and new thinking. Themes of interest to this stream include (but are not limited to) works focusing on:

● Strategies/actions to co-design and co-create communities of belonging to overcome racist, sexist, classist and ableist spaces

● Strategies/actions that move beyond the politics of belonging (see Yuval-Davis, 2006, 2011) to shape new forms of inclusiveness, allyship and solidarity

● Meanings and opportunities of multi-perspectival feminist praxis to question existing power structures and institutional norms

● Feminist strategies of intellectual reclamation of spaces of being/doing

● Feminist methodological approaches to action the otherwise

● Opportunities offered by feminist praxis to reinvigorate the political commitment to pluriversal, socially-just futures

● Strategies/actions of disruptive empowerment to move away from pre-established, cliquey traditions of collective knowledge production

● Feminist actions that embody care and responsibility within our interactions to promote egalitarian practice

The stream invites submissions that take the form of:

● Paper presentations

● Opinion pieces

● Short stories

● Journals (e.g., photo-journal, diaries)

● Short documentaries (e.g., photo-/video-/audio format)

● Games

The stream will close with an integrative workshop, with the aim to explore collective ways of engagement that consider the multi-perspective feminist praxis.

Please, reach out to convenors if you wish to discuss a potential contribution to the stream.

Submission guidelines

Send abstracts, summaries or synopses of approximately 500 words to feminisms2023@protonmail.com by 31 March 2023. Please note this stream will run in person.

References

Combahee River Collective. (1979). a black feminist statement. Off Our Backs, 9(6),6-8.

Espinosa Miñoso, Y. (2009). Etnocentrismo y colonialidad en los feminismos latinoamericanos: complicidades y consolidación de las hegemonías feministas en el espacio transnacional. Revista venezolana de estudios de la mujer, 14(33), 37-54.

Ibarra-Colado, E. (2006). Organization Studies and Epistemic Coloniality in Latin America: Thinking Otherness from the Margins. Organization, 13(4), 463-488.

Knobblock, I., & Kuokkanen, R. (2015). Decolonizing feminism in the North: A conversation with Rauna Kuokkanen. NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 23(4), 275-281.

Liu, H. (2021). How we learn whiteness: Disciplining and resisting management knowledge. Management Learning, 53(5): 776-796.

Nkomo, S. M. (2011). A postcolonial and anti-colonial reading of “African” leadership and management in organization studies: tensions, contradictions and possibilities. Organization, 18(3), 365-386

Swan, E. (2017). Manifesto for Feminist Critical Race Killjoys in CMS, Feminists and Queer Theorists Debate the Future of Critical Management Studies (Dialogues in Critical Management Studies, Vol. 3), Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 13-37.

Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40(3), 197-214.

Yuval-Davis, N. (2011). The politics of belonging: Intersectional contestations. Sage.

Convenor biographies

Jenny K Rodriguez is a Senior Lecturer in Employment Studies at Alliance Manchester Business School and lead of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion theme at the University of Manchester’s Work & Equalities Institute. Her research explores intersectional inequality in work and organisations, and the regulation of work and employment in the Global South. Her published work has reported on these issues in Latin America, the Hispanic Caribbean and the Middle East. jenny.rodriguez@manchester.ac.uk

Elisabeth Anna Guenther is a postdoctoral university assistant at the University of Vienna’s Centre for Teacher Education. Her work on intersectional interference in the social practice of teaching STEM received several awards. She combines her profound knowledge of quantitative and qualitative methodologies with social theories to unveil implicit inequality practices. Her current research focuses on social justice, intersectionality, digitality, teaching and learning in different educational organisations. elisabeth.guenther@univie.ac.at

Salma Raheem is a Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour at the University of Liverpool Management School. Her work focuses on multicultural individuals,the management of multicultural teams and the development of leadership and inclusive cultures for organisational diversity, with a research focus in African, Middle East and Indian contexts. She brings her research expertise into her social work and mentoring work with different charitable institutions in the UK, Middle East and India. salma.raheem@liverpool.ac.uk

Convenors and affiliations

Jill Atkins (Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom)

Jim Haslam (Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom)

João Paulo Resende de Lima (University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom)

Silvia Pereira de Castro Casa Nova (Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, and Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso do Sul, Campo Grande, Brazil)

Ana Carolina Rodrigues (Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil)

Barbara Voss (University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia)

About

Accounting can be understood as a social practice that establishes relationships around values, either economic, financial, social, or affective. Therefore, as we exchange, one affects and is affected by the other; what is exchanged involves the work of each other. What is being traded involves the work of each party and is, therefore, a concretization of our human agency. In this way, we understand accounting as the science of affect. On the other hand, accounting logic can alter the values involved in the exchange, financializing the relationships and dehumanizing the participants, establishing hierarchies that do not recognize in a fair way the effort undertaken by human labor materialized in the exchanged goods or services. In its historical development, accounting became eminently technical and distanced itself from the daily practice that (re)builds it. This same technical and hermetic accounting can be used to resist and counter-pose dehumanization and financialization, enacting resistance and emancipatory practices like annunciation, denunciation, education, and memorialization (Lima, 2022). Within this context, accounting can be used as a technology for subversive practices challenging the status quo. Critical accounting studies posit multiple theoretical possibilities (see Gendron, 2018; Reilley & Löhlein, in press) to understand accounting as a resistance technology. Our stream embraces well-established theoretical possibilities and invites the community to glance at new possibilities for accounting research, like Queer Theory and Decolonial approaches.

Queer Theory arises as a critique of the contemporary sexual order, questions the notion of normality, and proposes to subvert established practices - just like it does with the term queer. From this perspective, queer can be understood in two ways: as an adjective, that is, an identity that does not conform accordingly to the existing heterosexual matrix, and as a verb that “represents a mode of critical resistance against conceptual closure and normativity, offering alternatives to norms, stable and universal identities, regimes of the normal and of common sense” (Rumens, Souza & Brewis, 2019, p. 6).

Another way to challenge normativity is using a Decolonial approach. The Decolonial Epistemology Movement (Sauerbronn et al., in press) aims to question the colonial difference and the geopolitical division of knowledge (Mignolo, 2002). Therefore, it proposes to question how the European conquer of the Americas established an epistemicide of local knowledge, imposed Eurocentric values as a superior way of thinking and being, and established a colonial matrix of power (Mignolo, 2010).

Moreover, we invite authors to engage with different decolonial perspectives to advance critical accounting and business studies. We invite authors to think about decolonial feminism to deuniversalize women as an analytical category for research (see Miñoso, 2022); with the queer of colour critique to reflect on how to decolonize with/through dissident bodies and sexualities (Rea & Amancio, 2018); to (re)think business education (Colombo, 2022); to account for academic practices that challenge the pedagogies of cruelty (Segato, 2018); and to engage with the multiple possibilities of writing differently to challenge a standardized way of account (for) knowledge (Gilmore, Harding, Helin & Pullen, 2019), calling out for opportunities to share our living-writing trajectories, our escrevivências as proposed by Conceição Evaristo (Vieira, 2019; Silva & Carrieri, 2023). In conclusion, our stream proposes to reconnect with the everyday practice of accounting to/from people so that multiple possibilities of accountings and to account for can be (re)imagined and (re)constructed. This proposal unfolds along three major theoretical-practical axes that engage people, actions, and socially constituted groups in opposition: identities, alternative forms of entrepreneurship, and accounting for academia and social movements. Our call embraces and encourages submissions in diverse formats - as more details are ahead.

Identities

Individuals constantly negotiate their identities according to their social contexts, reflecting on who they are and who they may become. This reflection can originate a gap due to the social structures (e.g. heteronormativity, patriarchy, coloniality of being) that (re)produce inequalities constraining individual possibilities and restraining self-expression. Various internal and external sources play an important role in maintaining, enlarging, or diminishing these gaps. The social construction of accounting and business technologies impacts the nature of the self; therefore, identities are shaped within accounting, business, and its technologies. Our call is to explore these (re)modifications, (re)transformations, and (re)shaping of self-expressions while exercising, practicing, and interacting with accounting and its technologies. In the workplace, professionals have a range of identities, possibly living with diverse gender identification, sexual expressions, and matters of intersectionality that can have an effect on their identities and bodily expressions. We seek to support better understandings of identities that explore the boundaries of prior thoughts. The following themes (not exhaustive) are examples of understanding identities (including professionals working in academia and non-profit organizations): a) investigating masculinities and femininities in the workplace; b) exploring gender identification within binary and non-binary individuals, including gender diverse and individuals with transgender history; c) extending critical thinking on the role of colonization on the construction of self-identities; d) exploring the career development of employees from non-hegemonic groups within organization(s) or industry(ies); e) an intersectional approach exploring communities and their vulnerabilities to engage in the professionalization process; f) fragile identities, cis-heteronormativity, and precarisation of work during the pandemic; g) studies exploring possibilities beyond cis-heteronormative organizational structures.

Alternative forms of Entrepreneurship^[1]

Over time, alternative forms of entrepreneurship - also known as “entrepreneurship by necessity’ – allowed historically excluded and subalternized groups to survive in countries positioned at the margins of capitalism. We aim to discuss forms of entrepreneurship that include ‘others’ and non-hegemonic groups that have been excluded from access to entrepreneurial opportunities and invisibilized. They have often been excluded because of social markers. It is possible to notice the lack of marginalized groups’ representation in both academic and media discourses, which are dominated mainly by upper-class straight men. These discourses support an expectation of meeting certain standards or social norms and, therefore, interfering in the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups. Accounting and business have been a social technology used to make (in)visible or (in)viable distinct forms of entrepreneuring. So, this axis is an opportunity to address non-hegemonic (or alternative) entrepreneurship. By doing so, we hope to expand not only the entrepreneurial image to include these groups but also to challenge the hegemonic understanding of what entrepreneurship is. The following themes (not exhaustive) are examples of what we expect to discuss: (a) Entrepreneurial education; (b) Diversified cultural entrepreneurship; (c) Bottom of pyramid entrepreneurship, local forms of entrepreneurship, and the participation of large companies; (d) Entrepreneurship as the basis of social movements; (e) Entrepreneurship during imprisonment and re-socialization; (f) Entrepreneurship and precarious employment conditions; (g) Entrepreneurship in domestic and care services, unpaid work, care, and gender; (l) Indigenous peoples' entrepreneurship; (h) Queer and gender diverse entrepreneurship.

Accounting for academia and social movements

Over time, understanding the possibility (and the difficulty) of building bridges between social movements and academia has expanded. Understanding that academic activism incorporates other forms of knowledge in academic structures, this movement has been consolidated, but not without questioning. Freire warns us that “education is a form to intervene in the world. Intervention beyond the knowledge of the contents well or poorly taught and/or learned implies both efforts to reproduce the dominant ideology and to unmask it” (Freire, 1996, p. 98). Recently, in a movement of approximation of different kinds of knowledge, a course at Unicamp focused on the Racionais MC's in Brazilian social thought (Coll, 2022), which is an example of the possibility of bridging social movements, culture, and academia. This theme invites reflections on the approximations and distancing between academia and social movements, being interested in topics such as: (a) representations of social movements in academia; (b) representations of academia in social movements; (c) academic activism; (d) ruptures, co-optations, and fissures; (e) critical education and the incorporation of social movements into teaching; (f) business ethics as an oxymoron: business school as a place for exploring ethical debates and social change; (g) (re)thinking academic events as possibilities for bringing social movements and academia together.

Submission guidelines

The deadline for submission, both traditional and non-traditional, is March 31st, 2023, with the final decision by the end of April 14^th, 2023.  Submit your contribution to cas.cms.2023@gmail.com. We intend to hold some online sessions and in-person sessions.

Traditional Abstracts

Please submit 500 words abstract (excluding references, one page, word document NOT PDF, single spaced, no header, footers or track changes) together with your contact information. Written submissions can be in English, French, Portuguese or Spanish.

Non-Traditional Contributions

Other forms of contributions related to understanding accounting as a social practice and coming from scholars, researchers, practitioners, community leaders, and other society members are welcome. Contributions include, but are not limited to: Essays; Articles; Poetry; Journal entries; Prose; Videos; Music, and other sound representations; Artistic work (photos, drawings, digital creations, graffiti, comics, paintings, etc.). The content of submissions is entirely at the discretion of the author/artist/activist, considering the following format: Images - PNG or JPEG, minimum resolution 300 dpi; Text - DOCX, maximum 2,500 words, maximum 5 references; Audio - mp3 or link to downloadable copy (i.e. Dropbox, Google Drive); Video - mp4 or link to downloadable copy (i.e. Dropbox, Google Drive). Along with each submission, please submit a 100-word description to accompany your piece.

References

Coll, L. (2022). Racionais MC’s, professores de gerações: Grupo de rap foi reverenciado na Unicamp como parâmetro para a reflexão sobre o racismo e a desigualdade no país. Jornal da Unicamp, 07 dez 2022. https://www.unicamp.br/unicamp/ju/noticias/2022/12/07/racionais-mcs-professores-de-geracoes

Colombo, L. (2022). Civilise the business school. For a civic management education. Academy of Management Learning & Education, amle.2021.0430. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2021.0430

Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogia da autonomia: saberes necessários à pratica educativa. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. 166 p.

Gendron, Y. (2018). On the elusive nature of critical (Accounting) research. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 50, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2017.11.001

Gilmore, S., Harding, N., Helin, J., & Pullen, A. (2019). Writing differently. Management Learning, 50(1), 3–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507618811027

Lima, J. P. R. (2022). “No more martyrs!” Rhetorical analysis of a counter account of violence against the LGBTQ+ population. USP International Conference on Accounting. https://congressousp.fipecafi.org/anais/22UspInternational/ArtigosDownload/4045.pdf

Mignolo, W. D. (2010). Desobediencia epistémica: retórica de la modernidad, lógica de la colonialidad y gramática de la descolonialidad. Argentina: Ediciones del signo.

Mignolo, W. D. (2002). The geopolitics of knowledge and the colonial difference. South Atlantic Quarterly, 101(1), 57–96. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-101-1-57

Miñoso, Y. E. (2022). Decolonial Feminism in Latin America: An Essential Anthology. Hypatia, 37(3), 470-477. doi:10.1017/hyp.2022.44

Rea, C. A., & Amancio, I. M. S. (2018). Descolonizar a sexualidade: Teoria Queer of Colour e trânsitos para o Sul. Cadernos Pagu, 53. https://doi.org/10.1590/18094449201800530015

Reilley, J., & Löhlein, L. (2023). Theorizing (And) the future of interdisciplinary accounting research. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 102578. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2023.102578

Rumens, N., de Souza, E. M., & Brewis, J. (2019). Queering queer theory in management and organization studies: Notes toward queering heterosexuality. Organization Studies, 40(4), 593–612. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617748904

Sauerbronn, F. F., Ayres, R. M., da Silva, C. M., & Lourenço, R. L. (in press). Decolonial studies in accounting? Emerging contributions from Latin America. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 102281. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2020.102281

Segato, R. L. (2018). Contra-pedagogías de la crueldad [Counter-pedagogies of cruelty]. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros. 101 p.

Silva, F. R. D., and Carrieri, A. D. P. 2022. “Reframing “Organizations and Society” from the Escrevivências: for a Form of Management from and in the Gaps.” Organizações & Sociedade, 29: 385-413. https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-92302022v29n0016EN.

Vieira, H. 2019. “Notas (Im)Possíveis Para Um Futuro Insistente.” In Ninguém Solta a Mão de Ninguém: Manifesto Afetivo de Resistência e Pelas Liberdades. São Paulo: Claraboia.

^[1] This axis is inspired by the streams on Feminist intersectional entrepreneurship submitted to GWO2022 Colombia and to GWO2023 South Africa.

Convenor biographies

Jill Atkins (Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom), j.f.atkins@sheffield.ac.uk. Jill researches mainly in the area of corporate governance and accountability with a focus on responsible investment, social and environmental accounting and assurance and the historical roots of environmental accounting. Her current project is 'Extinction Accounting and Accountability.'

Jim Haslam (Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom), jim.haslam@durham.ac.uk. Professor Jim Haslam, BA (Hons), ACA, FRSA, PhD, is an internationally recognised researcher in the critical social analysis of accounting and related practices. He is an experienced educator and supervisor and is envisaged in projects concerned to realize the progressive potential of accounting/transparency and audit.

João Paulo Resende de Lima (University of Glasgow, United Kingdom), joaopaulo.lima@glasgow.ac.uk.

Silvia Pereira de Castro Casa Nova (Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, and Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso do Sul, Campo Grande, Brazil), silvianova@usp.br

Ana Carolina Rodrigues (Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil), anacarolina.orc@usp.br

Barbara Voss (University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia), Barbara.Voss@canberra.edu.au. My principal research concern is equity within the politics of businesses. My research discusses the inter-related aspects of accounting, politics, regulation and discourses. My work is multidisciplinary and involves how discourses are used, interpreted and applied by business. Traditionally, with respect environmental, social and inclusion discourses, businesses tend to treat these issues as a form of ‘return on investment’ for business to engage with these discourses, they do so, but the nature of the engagement is subject to challenge. My research investigates the politics of businesses within public and private sector contexts at methodological, technical and political levels. My research is informed by post-structural theory including Laclau and Mouffe, Gramsci, Derrida, Butler, Baudr

Convenors and affiliations

Olga Solovyeva, Doctoral Researcher (The Open University, UK)

Dr. Anna-Lena Maier, Postdoctoral Researcher (Ma-co Maritimes Competenzcentrum, Germany)

About

Businesses are increasingly asked to take a political stand against authoritarian and totalitarian regimes (Eabrasu and Wilson, 2022). Satisfying these demands helps them maintain their legitimacy as a rightful expectation of the business, fulfilling its role of being politically responsible, or a good corporate citizen. How businesses position themselves regarding human rights violations through state authorities, exploitative political-economic structures and the onset of violent conflict and war is under intense public scrutiny. In the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, a database by the Yale School of Management’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute meticulously documents which firms continued doing business as usual (Chief Executive Leadership Institute, 2022). The FIFA World Cup in Qatar is drawing the attention of a broader public to questions surrounding the (re-)definition of relationships with authoritarian regimes, as well as the corresponding political responsibility of business. Finding answers to these challenging questions is of great societal relevance: According to indexes such as the Economist Intelligence Unit’s World Democracy Index (2022), democratic governance is in global decline. At the same time, calls for a greater integration of the literatures on (Political) Corporate Social Responsibility and Business and Human Rights (Ramasastry 2015; Wettstein 2012), as well as a better understanding of the ethical implications of firms’ political strategies and activities have steadily been intensifying (Boddewyn und Buckley 2017; Kamasak et al. 2019; Liedong et al. 2020).

Although the democratic political environment is shrinking worldwide, the research on the political responsibility of business remains narrow. The founding model of CSR, as proposed by Carroll in 1979, did not emphasise the political layer of responsibilities, keeping in focus the dimensions of economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibilities. However, as Warren (2003) recognises, a business organisation has evolved into a public institution whose activities are determined by economic factors and social and political forces. As a response, a well-developed body of political CSR scholarship emerged, led by the work of Andreas Scherer and Guido Palazzo (e.g., Scherer, Rasche, Palazzo and Spicer 2016; Hussain and Moriarty, 2018). However, political CSR has rarely paid attention to the diversity of political regimes and the complexity of conceptualising degrees of statehood or governmental power (Banerjee, 2018; Maier, 2021).

Political regimes vary across the globe and affect businesses in profoundly different ways. Some autocracies can be described as fully consolidated, whilst others, such as transitional or hybrid regimes, only exhibit some authoritarian traits, thus affecting the political responsibilities of businesses differently both in kind and degree (e.g., Linz, 2000). Different types of autocracies thus pose a variety of obstacles and create their own specificities for doing business (responsibly). Meanwhile, businesses do play political roles by stepping into the territory of public goods provision, self-regulation and institution-building in contexts of “developing” and “weak” states, which often have autocrats in power. Moreover, while developed democracies such as the USA, Japan and Western Europe are headquarters for most MNCs, China and India have been broken into rankings recently, featuring several growing companies (Cheung, 2022). Hence, today many big businesses not only operate in but also originate from countries considered authoritarian. MNCs inevitably cooperate with governments and political and affiliated structures in both contexts. Altogether, such interactions pose an interesting challenge for setting criteria for the political responsibility of business.

When talking about the political role of organisations, Scherer and Palazzo (2011) argue that they should go 'beyond the instrumental view of politics to develop a new understanding of global politics where private actors such as corporations and civil society organisations play an active role in the democratic regulation and control of market transactions' (p. 901). Political CSR typically prescribes businesses to engage in the deliberative process of creating a democratic social-political environment (Scherer and Palazzo, 2007; Dawkins, 2022). In the authoritarian regime, the process of democratic deliberation is not possible due to the state-run censorship and gatekeeping of political discussion. This means that no business, assumed that it wanted to do out of a genuine concern for the common good, could fulfil its political function at a full scale. The biggest point of criticism of the normative concept of political CSR is that it is non-applicable as demand outside of the context of liberal democracy or limited statehood. Most recent research inquiring into problematic contexts usually looks at the micro-level as often the only place where political responsibility can be practised (Acosta, Acquier and Gond, 2021; Reinecke and Donaghey, 2021). From a political CSR perspective, businesses in authoritarian regimes inevitably encounter moral dilemmas, leading to a legitimacy crisis. Ironically, it is those very contexts that arguably require businesses to take a political stand the most. But is that even possible in an authoritarian state? And if so, how?

Eventually, any political encounter with an authoritarian regime may lead to a legitimacy crisis grounded in the perverse understanding of what is considered ‘political’ in such regimes. The expectations of normative standpoints set contradicting demands to businesses: as produced by legislators and politicians in such states in contrast to international regulation, as well as increasingly vocalised societal expectations. At the same time, business remains one of the most important actors and, indeed, one of the most powerful in the current economic settings.

We invite empirical and theoretical inquiries across management and organisation disciplines to contribute to this stream by exploring the practical applicability of political responsibility in the growing authoritarian, and other problematic political environments. Full papers and work in progress are welcome. We are explicitly interested in contributions that criticise and contextualise existing political CSR scholarship and approaches to the political responsibility of businesses from various perspectives (in the sense of deconstruction), and that propose concrete alternatives (in the sense of reconstruction).

Proposed topics of interest could be, but are not limited to:

• Applied critique of current business practices in the context of authoritarianism with a focus on their implications for (political) Corporate Social Responsibility
• Contextualisation and critique of prominent conceptualisations of political CSR, political responsibility and responsible business
• Leverage of powerful economic actors: how can and how should multinational enterprises (MNEs) position themselves vis-à-vis authoritarian host countries?
• Actor constellations: whom to take a stand against, really – beyond the democratic MNE vs. authoritarian host country-dichotomy
• Investor relations and political responsibility: what is the role of investor relations in defining the political responsibility of business?
• Redefining the role of civil society in political responsibility: prospects for public deliberation, and how to practically engage civil society stakeholders in authoritarian contexts.
• Self-critique: how can critical management studies be practically critical in the context of doing business with and within authoritarian host country contexts?
• Reconstruction is based on a greater variety of epistemologies and empirical insights: how can critical management studies advance marginalised perspectives and experiences?

Submission guidelines

ICMS 2023 will take place in Nottingham, UK. This stream will run in a hybrid format. We welcome online as well as in-person participants.

Please send your submissions with either full papers or abstracts of up to 750 words to olga.solovyeva@open.ac.uk with the stream's title in the subject line.

References

Acosta, P., Acquier, A. and Gond, J.P., 2021. Revisiting Politics in Political CSR: How coercive and deliberative dynamics operate through institutional work in a Colombian company. Organization Studies, 42(7), pp.1111-1134.

Banerjee, S. B. (2018), ‘Transnational Power and Translocal Governance: The Politics of Corporate Responsibility. Human Relations, 71(6), pp. 796–821.

Boddewyn, Jean J.; Buckley, Peter J. (2017): Integrating social and political strategies as forms of reciprocal exchange into the analysis of corporate governance modes. In: British Journal of Management 28 (4), S. 575–588.

Dawkins, C.E., 2022. Varieties of deliberation: Framing plurality in political CSR. Business Ethics Quarterly, 32(3), pp.374-403.

Eabrasu, M. and Wilson, D. C. (2022) ‘Management, Political Philosophy, and Social Justice: Special Theme’, Philosophy of Management, 21(3), pp. 281–287.

Carroll, A. B. (1979) ‘A three-dimensional conceptual model of corporate performance’, Academy of Management Review. Academy of Management, Briarcliff Manor, NY, 4(4), pp. 497–505.

Cheung, B. (2022) ‘What Countries Are Most Multinational Corporations Based in?’, Investopedia, 20 August. Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/021715/why-are-most-multinational-corporations-either-us-europe-or-japan.asp.

Chief Executive Leadership Institute (2022), ‘Over 1,000 Companies Have Curtailed Operations in Russia – But Some Remain’, Yale School of Management, 07 November 2022. Available at: https://som.yale.edu/story/2022/over-1000-companies-have-curtailed-operations-russia-some-remain.

Economist Intelligence Unit (2022), ‘Democracy Index 2021: the China Challenge’, 10 February 2022. Available at: https://www.eiu.com/public/topical_report.aspx?campaignid=DemoIndex21.

Hussain, W. and Moriarty, J., 2018. Accountable to whom? Rethinking the role of corporations in political CSR. Journal of Business Ethics, 149(3), pp.519-534.

Kamasak, Rifat; James, Simon R.; Yavuz, Meltem (2019): The interplay of corporate social responsibility and corporate political activity in emerging markets: The role of strategic flexibility in non‐market strategies. Business Ethics: A European Review 28 (3), pp. 305–320.

Liedong, Tahiru Azaaviele; Aghanya, Daniel; Rajwani, Tazeeb (2020): Corporate Political Strategies in Weak Institutional Environments: A Break from Conventions. Journal of Business Ethics 161 (4), pp. 855–876.

Linz, J. J. (2000), ‘Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes’, Boulder, Colorado, London: Lynne Rienner.

Maier, A-L (2021), ‘Political Corporate Social Responsibility in Authoritarian Contexts’, Journal of International Business Policy, 4, pp. 476–495.

Ramasastry, Anita (2015): Corporate Social Responsibility Versus Business and Human Rights: Bridging the Gap Between Responsibility and Accountability. Journal of Human Rights 14 (2), pp. 237–259.

Reinecke, J. and Donaghey, J., 2021. Political CSR at the coalface–The roles and contradictions of multinational corporations in developing workplace dialogue. Journal of Management Studies, 58(2), pp.457-486.

Scherer, A.G. and Palazzo, G., 2007. Toward a political conception of corporate responsibility: Business and society seen from a Habermasian perspective. Academy of Management Review, 32(4), pp.1096-1120.

Scherer, A. G. and Palazzo, G. (2011) ‘The New Political Role of Business in a Globalized World: A Review of a New Perspective on CSR and its Implications for the Firm, Governance, and Democracy’, Journal of Management Studies, 48(4), pp. 899–931.

Scherer, A.G., Rasche, A., Palazzo, G., and Spicer, A. (2016), ‘Managing for Political Corporate Social Responsibility: New Challenges and Directions for PCSR 2.0’, Journal of Management Studies, 53(3), pp. 273-298.

Warren, R. C. (2003) ‘The evolution of business legitimacy’, European Business Review. MCB UP Ltd.

Wettstein, Florian (2012): CSR and the Debate on Business and Human Rights: Bridging the Great Divide. Business Ethics Quarterly 22 (4), pp. 739–770.

Convenor biographies

Olga Solovyeva, Doctoral Researcher (The Open University, UK). My research interests are situated in a broad topic of technology and society. I studied computer-mediated social practices such as online dating and online learning. Now I am working on issues of data ethics, IT business regulation, and the relationship between the state and tech in Russia at The Open University (UK).

Dr. Anna-Lena Maier, Postdoctoral Researcher (ma-co maritimes competenzcentrum, Germany). I love doing interdisciplinary research on sustainable and digital transformations and strategies for responsible management and change, especially in the context of doing business in autocracies.

About

Is your work struggling to fit in? Are your ideas too darn interesting to align with the streams available to you at ICMS 2023? - Then this is the stream for you.

The open stream is a space for all critical work. Whether you focus on big issues or perhaps small matters that have been overlooked for far too long, the open stream will aim to group similar papers together, or even arrange papers that disagree or talk to each other in interesting ways. We would love it if your work linked to the overall theme of the conference, saying that, we would also love it if your work angrily rebelled against any theme, categorization or bind - we just like critical work.

If you feel like your work does not quite fit in, or perhaps you feel your work can’t (or shouldn’t!) be contained by any forms of conference structures, come and join us in stream 13.

Submission guidelines

Please submit a maximum of 500 words outlining the content of your proposed contribution to the stream to ICMS2023@nottingham.ac.uk by the 31^st March 2023. Alongside traditional research papers we are receptive to alternative forms of presentation. Presentations will be made in person, but hybrid engagement is a possibility, upon request.

Decisions will be made and communicated by the 14^th April 2023.

Convenors and affiliations

Juliana Mainard-Sardon (Nottingham Trent University) juliana.mainard-sardon@ntu.ac.uk

Suzanne Couloigner (Nottingham University Business School) suzanne.couloigner2@nottingham.ac.uk

About

Are you a PhD student and/or do you define yourself as an Early Career Researcher? Do you have work in progress on a captivating and critical topic? The PhD and ECR Cafés are then a place for you.

Whether you are at the beginning of your studies or already an experienced ECR join the open Cafés for constructive talks. The Cafés will aim at prompting open and dynamic conversations about your research, CMS topics and more. As CMS scholars, the Cafés will provide you with the space to interact with critical friends, namely “a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data to be examined through another lens, and offers critiques of a person’s work as a friend. A critical friend takes the time to fully understand the context of the work presented and the outcomes that the person or group is working toward. The friend is an advocate for the success of that work” (Costa and Kallick, 1993, p.5). Therefore, the Cafés are a supportive networking space where you will have the chance to present your research to a friendly audience. We believe that “the café [provides] an opportune space in which to create relations based on spontaneous solidarity” (Haine, 1996, p.150) that are based on open dialogue, respect and trust.

The Cafés are planned so that you will not miss anything from the conference itself (you will still be able to attend the different streams and social activities) and will include:

• Day 1: PhD and ECR Breakfast
• Day 2: Refresher Café
• Day 3: Wrap-up Café

Submission guidelines

Please submit an outline of your research (max 500 words) to ICMS2023@nottingham.ac.uk (Stream 14 – PhD and ECR Cafés) by 7^th April 2023

In line with the conference theme (Being practically critical: Re-imagining possibilities for CMS, challenging the idea of a conference and (re)building our community of communities), please note that we encourage alternative forms of presentation, including posters, songs and poems, theatrical presentation and stand-up, (visual/auditive) arts and more but we are not expecting to see any PowerPoint presentation. Presentations will be made in person, but hybrid engagement is a possibility, upon request.

References

Costa, A. L., & Kallick, B. (1993). Through the lens of a critical friend. Educational leadership, 51 (49-49).

Haine, W. Scott, (1996) The World of the Paris Cafe, Sociability among the French Working Class, 1789-1914. London: John Hopkins University Press.

Convenors

The MEND Collective:

David Watson (Norwich Business School)

Laura Colombo (Exeter Business School)

James Scott Vandeventer (University of Huddersfield)

Patrick Elf (Middlesex University)

Karishma Jain (University of Cambridge)

Simon Mair (University of York)

Constantine Manolchev (Exeter Business School)

About

Why should we make space for degrowth/post-growth within business school classrooms? How are notions of degrowth and post-growth being brought into management education? Is degrowth/post-growth even comprehendible within business schools classrooms? This session will build on conversations about these questions, which have been ongoing since 2021 when a group of early career academics began a dialogue about degrowth and post-growth in management education. Our series of ‘learning sets’, intensive 2-hour online group discussions, became a forum for discussing practices and pedagogical approaches for bringing degrowth and post-growth into management education. As a result of this dialogue, we formed the MEND (Management Educators Navigating Degrowth) collective to sustain and deepen these conversations. We understand degrowth as a project of radical socio-ecological transformation aimed at explicitly countering the dominance of historic practices premised on growth through human and natural resource exploitation. Degrowth approaches are sensitive to the harmful consequences of unlimited consumption on people and planet, and seek a transition to reduced consumption and the transition to a sustainable future that is post-growth.

In this critical development workshop session, we will begin by setting the scene and establishing the necessity of conversations considering why degrowth and post-growth should feature in the teaching of business and management education. We will then share some insights from discussions within MEND that took place over the course of our learning sets, focusing on the practical challenge to bring notions of degrowth and post-growth into management education, sharing ideas and tools from our own practice. These discussions address many of the issues that management educators face in attempting to put degrowth teaching into practice and begin a dialogue considering how and if these issues can be reconciled. How do management educators square the urgent need to embed issues like sustainability and climate change into teaching with an institutional context that has contributed to these issues by its acceptance and promulgation of an ideology of growth? We will discuss the paradoxical nature of teaching degrowth and post-growth in a business school setting and expose the barriers encountered since the MEND collective was constituted. Finally, we will call participants for action, focusing on how we can strengthen mutual support and move forward together in overcoming said barriers.

After members of MEND have introduced why and how management educators might bring degrowth and post growth into pedagogic practices we intend to initiate a wider conversation with the audience.  We will facilitate a ‘learning set’-style discussion with attendees with the aim of motivating insightful and generative moments that can build on the preceding discussion. We will conclude the session by outlining our plans for widening the MEND network that will continue to hold regular dialogues and spur further pedagogical development in the future.

This will be an open session and we are seeking abstracts or papers but are running the session with the aim of attracting management academics interested in discussing bringing post growth and degrowth perspectives and content into their teaching. The session will last 90 minutes and will be organised as follows.

In the first part (15 min), the chair (one of the conveners) will introduce the aim and format of the session and give a brief overview on MEND (e.g. how the network emerged, who we are, why we’re here).

In the second part (30 min), discussants (other conveners) will address four questions:

1. Why should we make space for degrowth/post-growth within business schools classrooms?
2. How have we brought notions of degrowth and post-growth into our own practice?
3. What barriers / paradoxes have we encountered?
4. How can we move forward together?

In the third part (30 min), participants will be invited to join the dialogue through small group discussion facilitated by MEND, focusing on the following questions:

1. What is our understanding of degrowth and post-growth, how are they relevant to our teaching?
2. How have we brought / are planning to bring notions of degrowth and post-growth into our own practice?
3. What tools/resources/support are necessary to achieve this?
4. What resources/tools/support are already available to us as educators – and what can we share – to support and collaborate with others attempting to embed degrowth/post-growth teaching practices?

In the fourth and final part (15 min), representatives from small groups will share some insights from their discussion, followed by a brief overview of the next steps for MEND and invitation to join our network.

While we anticipate many people engaging with this session will be based at business schools, we have found that a strength of MEND lies in encouraging cross-disciplinary conversations. We therefore welcome participation from people in other faculties where business/management-related topics are being taught.

To aid planning the session it will be helpful if anyone interested can contact us to formally express their interest (although this is not required to participate). Please contact the lead convenor to do so or if you have queries of any kind (Dave Watson - david.watson@uea.ac.uk)

* Please note the session will run as an in-person only event.

Convenor biographies

David Watson, Associate Professor, Organizational Behaviour, Norwich Business School.An interdisciplinary researcher interested in the concept of well-being and its relationship with work with a particular interest in 'alternative' forms of organization. Other research interests include Marx’s concept of alienation, well-being theory – in particular the capabilities approach and the role of well-being in guiding policy.

Karishma Jain, Deputy Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NanoDTC), University of Cambridge. Her primary background is in Chemistry and Materials Science, but her recent work has focused on the interface of science and innovation, in particular addressing the challenges of sustainability and climate change in applied science teaching in higher education.

Laura Colombo, Senior Lecturer in Management Studies, Exeter Business School. Laura’s research explores social agricultural cooperation practices in Italy, with a focus on approaches and processes of scaling. She has also worked extensively in project design across Europe building partnerships with NGOs, associations, cooperatives and environmentally motivated social enterprises.

James Scott Vandeventer, Lecturer in Management, University of Huddersfield. James’ research interests are situated at the nexus of processual approaches to organising, human geography, and transformative change. These guide his research into: diverse economies and alternative organisational practices; housing and urban futures; the role of organisations in post-growth and degrowth transitions.

Constantine Manolchev, Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Futures, Exeter Business School. Constantine studies organisations as sites of precarity and violence. His academic research further focuses on decent work, community resilience and he has published pedagogic guides on qualitative research methods.

Patrick Elf, Senior Research Fellow in Sustainable Business, Centre for Enterprise and Economic Development Research (CEEDR), Middlesex University. Patrick’s research focuses on investigating avenues for behaviour change approaches towards the adoption of more sustainable lifestyles, and mechanism towards the adaptation of sustainable business models. He has a particular interest in sustainable, inclusive and transformative consumption.

Simon Mair, Lecturer in Sustainability, University of York. Simon is an ecological economist, working to understand the current economy in order to build a better one. Simon’s research interests include the post-growth and degrowth economics, post-capitalism, and alternative economies.

Convenors

Dr. Wendy Cukier, Professor, Founder & Academic Director of the Diversity Institute, Academic Director of the Women Entrepreneurship Hub, and Research Lead of the Future Skills Centre.

About

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on Canadian workers with many facing job losses, placing a stronger emphasis on the need to upgrade or learn new skills to rejoin the workforce. Workers across industries must figure out how they can adapt to the new social and economic realities due to the ongoing pandemic, and companies must learn how to match those workers to new roles and activities. Despite this, many employers have difficulty attracting and retaining employees from equity-deserving groups (for e.g. women, racialized people, persons with disabilities, those from 2SLGBTQ+ communities, youth, and immigrants). The most difficult problems faced are sourcing, selection, attraction, and retention. There is a misconception that there is a shortage of talent from equity-deserving groups in the labour market (1). This is where wraparound support can help organizations meet these staffing challenges. Wraparound supports are services provided by employers and/or third party program organizers (may be non-profit or for-profit) that support jobseekers in their upskilling and reskilling journey (2).

Examples of wraparound supports could include direct financial support (stipends, grants, etc.), employment placement, career counseling, mental health supports, childcare, transportation reimbursement, access to technology (like laptops or industry software), networking, mentoring, and sponsorship (3,4,5,6,7). Although limited in scope, extant research has found that wraparound supports are more family-friendly, less costly, and more effective than traditional approaches to job seeker training (which did not support the jobseeker throughout the process).

In this workshop, we will cover the current wraparound support landscape in Ontario, going over best practices and the scope of the current offering, followed by an exploration of what can be done moving forward to improve the effectiveness of the supports.

Workshop Focus Areas

Considerations for Designing Wraparound Supports

* Definition of “wraparound" supports

* Assessing diverse needs

* Underserved populations

* Equity-diversity and inclusion-informed design of programs

* Employer engagement and inclusive workplaces

* More coordination among service providers

* Evaluation and outcome measures

* Resources

Recommendations and open discussion

* Guidance for policy design

* Guidance for program design and implementation

* Guidance for research and evaluation

Online (e.g. via Google Meet/Zoom)

For further queries, please contact: Dr. Guang Ying Mo, Director, Research Diversity Institute Ted Rogers School of Management Toronto Metropolitan University, Ontario, Canada. Email: g.mo@torontomu.c

References

1. Employment and Social Development Canada. (2021). Employment and Social Development Canada 2021 to 2022 Departmental Plan. https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/esdcedsc/documents/corporate/reports/departmental-plan/ESDC_Departmental_Plan_21-22_EN

2. Ontario Centre for Workforce Innovation. (2017). Conversations with employment Ontario service providers. https://ocwi-coie.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/OCWIServiceProviderReport2017-ENG-Web.pdf

3. Government of Canada. (2022). Apply for funding to support workers and employers towards economic recovery - Sectoral Workforce Solutions Program – Closed. Employment and Social Development Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/employmentsocial-development/services/funding/sectoral-workforce-solutions-economicrecovery.html

4. Manitoba Start. (2022). WorkStart Work Experience program. https://manitobastart.com/for-newcomers/work-experience-programs/

5. Roth, W. D., Seidel, M. D. L., Ma, D., & Lo, E. (2012). In and out of the ethnic economy: a longitudinal analysis of ethnic networks and pathways to economic success across immigrant categories. International Migration Review, 46(2), 310-361.

6. Braundy, M., & Ventures, J. (2020). Lessons learned and best practices. Men & women and tools - Bridging the divide. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343808398_Executive_Summary_Revised_Lessons_Learned_and_Best_Practices_Increasing_the_Successful_Participation_Of_Women_in_Apprenticeship_Skilled_Technical_Jobs

7. Boat, A. A., Syvertsen, A. K., & Scales, P. C. (2021). The role of social capital in promoting work readiness among opportunity youth. Children and Youth Services Review, 131.

Convenor biography

Dr. Wendy Cukier, Founder & Academic Director of the Diversity Institute, Academic Director of the Women Entrepreneurship Hub, and Research Lead of the Future Skills Centre

Dr. Wendy Cukier is a professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy at the Ted Rogers School of Management and Academic Director of the Diversity Institute and former VP of Research and Innovation and more than 200 articles on aspects of diversity, inclusion and innovation.

She is the Founder of Toronto Metropolitan University’s (formerly Ryerson University) Diversity Institute which has 100 research staff, 100 research associates from around the world and 200 industry partners focused on dimensions of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, future skills, and entrepreneurship. It leads a number of large partnership-based projects aimed at promoting the participation and advancement of underrepresented groups including women, Black and other racialized persons, Indigenous, LGBTQ and persons with disabilities. She is recognized for her in-depth and one-of-a-kind multi-year studies, DiversityLeads which began a decade ago. The latest report supported analyzes the representation of women, Black people and other racialized persons among 9,843 individuals on the boards of directors of large companies, agencies, board and commissions (ABCs); hospitals; the voluntary sector and educational institutions.

She also leads the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (WEKH) which provided the research analysis for Canada’s largest study of Black women entrepreneurs. Rise Up: A Study of 700 Black Women Entrepreneurs was released by the Black Business Professionals Association (BBPA), Casa Foundation for International Development and de Sedulous Women Leaders with researchers from WEKH.

Her work on the DiversityLeads project helped shape Bill C-25 and the 50-30 Challenge. The Diversity Institute is now an ecosystem partner supporting organizations that sign up for the 50-30 Challenge committing to gender parity and increased diversity on their boards and or senior leadership roles.

Wendy is also a well-regarded champion of social justice. She created the Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) Lifeline Syria Challenge which mobilized 1000 volunteers and raised $5m to privately sponsor more than 400 Syrian refugees and recently launched Lifeline Afghanistan to help support the 20,000 Afghans expected to resettle in Canada.

She has been recognized with many awards including the Harry Jerome Diversity Award, and recognized in the 100 Most Powerful Women by WXN. She has been named a YWCA Woman of Distinction, one of the "100 Alumni who shaped the Century" by the University of Toronto and International Women’s Forum 2020 Women Who Make a Difference. Wendy holds a PhD in Information Systems, an MBA, an MA, and honorary doctorates from Laval and Concordia. She also received Canada’s Meritorious Service Cross, one of Canada’s highest civilian honours. She is also the founder of several startups, social enterprises and nonprofits.

Convenors

The Ekstasis Group - info@ekstasis.net

Christopher Woods (University of Liverpool Management School)
Fabian Maier (Nottingham University Business School)
Friederike Döbbe (Stockholm School of Economics)
Jack Davis (University of Liverpool Management School)
Pierre-Eloi Gay (FGV EAESP)

About

Critical scholars have argued that management education must begin reckoning with its complicity in producing and reproducing a deadly status quo. This means acknowledging the extent to which various forms of social injustices (Peredo et al., 2022), racism (Dar et al., 2021), the climate crisis and ecological degradation emanate from the lingering colonialism, insipid economism and (ir)rational-choice assumptions which underlie mainstream management theory and education (Nyberg & Wright, 2022). Nevertheless, our rage and critique remains impotent for as long as our words and thoughts are confined to the pages of academic journals or niche trade paperbacks.

Research and teaching within a business school can often feel like we are walking between worlds. We inquire about forms of human organising and allegedly communicate our findings to the outer world. However, we belong to a generation of researchers whose experience of higher education has been defined by marketisation. In the age of league tables and excellence frameworks, research output often takes precedence over our role as disseminators of knowledge and facilitators of learning.

Once considered a social good, today our scholarship represents little more than a shallow commodity propping up the reputation of institutions that barely pay us for our efforts. We write to be published, not be read and we teach for sustenance, never to be heard (Parker, 2021). Market pressures stifle our mission to include students in the more critical, progressive and imaginative discussions that are ongoing in our discipline. More importantly, our hands are tied when it comes to teaching what we think they should know in pulling the breaks on our death drive to what the UN secretary general, António Guterres, framed as the ‘highway to climate hell’ (Harvey & Carrington, 2022).

So, what is to be done?

- What would a school for organising (Parker, 2016), a “civilised” (Colombo, 2022) or decolonised (Banerjee, 2021; Woods et al., 2022) business school look like?

- Do we need to shut it down (Parker, 2018) and build humane (Korcia, 2022) alternatives from the bottom up?

- How could we possibly prefigure a different form of educating that addresses the multiple, accelerating, and entangled crises of today, rather than reproducing the system that causes them?

- What is the role of organisational education for a radical emancipatory social-ecological transformation that is urgently needed?

- How can we break with unsustainable and unjust knowledge claims within our teaching practices?

- In what ways would the relation of research and teaching need to be changed or radically rethought? How can we “climate-proof” (Nyberg & Wright, 2022) research and education in the business school context?

- How can students be inspired to harness their curiosity and sensibilities to address social and ecological crises from a critical perspective?

- What forms of co-creational research and teaching might enhance this?

- How can PGRs/ECRs be encouraged and enabled to teach in more critical and experimental ways?

- What sort of power relations do we need to reckon with, given their precarious circumstances?

- What elements, forms of knowledge, and contents of teaching might a school for organisation curricular entail and how can we get there?

- How far do these counter-act corporate hegemony, the marginalization of certain voices, environmental degradation and social inequalities?

- How might we begin to redefine traditional categories of interest (markets, supply chain, entrepreneurship etc) so we are better equipped to teach and research the relevant challenges we face?

- How can activism and social movements inform critical and experimental teaching in the school for organising?

Submission guidelines

The Ekstasis group will host 2-hour workshop to jointly explore and experiment with these questions. We welcome both conceptual and empirical explorations around how to prefigure a school for organising. The aim of this workshop is to discuss the above questions and build a community of critical management scholars interested in laying the foundations which enable us to imagine and begin to embody an alternative.

To apply for participation, we invite you to submit a précis of your take on core issues regarding the future of the business school in the age of environmental and social catastrophes. The workshop is open to anyone interested, but we are particularly curious to hear from doctoral students and early-career researchers about their rage, experiences and ideas. Your application should be no longer than one page of A4 (any format) and show which particular background knowledge, personal experiences and/or systematic positions the applicants would contribute to our discussions. Submissions can be traditional formats such as extended abstracts for essays or academic papers, but also more creative forms such as teaching notes, autoethnographic anecdotes, poetry or visual/graphic artwork. Please indicate on your submission if you plan to participate online or if you will join us in person in Nottingham. With sufficient demand we will host the workshop in hybrid format.

The two-hour workshop will open with brief keynotes by Laura Colombo and Martin Parker to focus our discussions, before breaking out into congruent groups based upon submissions to work through the challenges and possibilities of prefiguring a school for organising. After a short break, the group will reconvene to present our ideas before closing the workshop with a brief plenary session to pave the way forward.

Submission deadline: 31/03/2023

All submissions to be sent to info@ekstasis.net and applicants will be notified of their acceptance by 14/04/2023.

References

Banerjee, B. (2021). Manifesto for decolonizing the business school curriculum. Available online at; https://www.bayes.city.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/656110/manifesto-for-decolonizing-the-business-school-curriculum.pdf (22/12/2022).

Colombo, L. (2022) Civilise the Business School. For a Civic Management Education. AMLE, 0, https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2021.0430

Dar, S., Liu, H., Martinez Dy, A., & Brewis, D. N. (2021). The business school is racist: Act up! Organization, 28(4), 695–706.

Harvey, F., &Carrington, D. (2022). World is on ‘highway to climate hell’, UN chief warns at Cop27 summit. The Guardian. Available online at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/07/cop27-climate-summit-un-secretary-general-antonio-guterres (23/12/2022).

Korica, Ma. (2022): A hopeful manifesto for a more humane academia. Organization Studies, 017084062211063.

Nyberg, D., & Wright, C. (2022). Climate-Proofing Management Research. Academy of Management Perspectives, 36(2), 713-728 Parker, M. (2021). Against management: Auto-critique. Organization, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084211020922

Parker, M. (2021). Against management: Auto-critique. Organization, 135050842110209.

Parker, M. (2018). Shut down the business school: What’s wrong with management education. Pluto Press.

Parker, M. (2016) Towards and alternative business school: A School of Organizing. A Research Agenda for Management and Organization Studies. Edward Elgar Publishing, p. 147-154 8 p.

Peredo, A. M., Abdelnour, S., Adler, P., Banerjee, B., Bapuji, H., Calas, M. et al. (2022). We are boiling: Management scholars speaking out on COVID-19 and social justice. Journal of Management Inquiry, 31(4), 339–357.

Woods, C., Dell, K., & Carroll, B. (2022). Decolonizing the business schoo.: Reconstructing the entrepreneurship classroom through indigenizing pedagogy and learning.  Academy of Management Learning & Education, 21, 82–100.

Convenor biographies

The Ekstasis Group - info@ekstasis.net

In its purest meaning, ekstasis speaks of an experience outside of oneself; to be elsewhere, cast from ones’ proper place. The principal goal of this project is to build an independent space for researchers who recognise the role that orthodox management-organisation education plays in perpetuating an unsustainable present. The Ekstasis group provides a collaborative platform for experimental theory building and progressive philosophy in management research and education to discover ways for radically transforming the neoliberal syllabus to effectively meet the challenges we collectively face.

Convenors

Victoria Pagan (Newcastle University Business School)

Ilaria Boncori (University of Essex)

Carolyn Hunter (University of York)

Jenny Davidson (Newcastle University)

About

The goal of this critical development workshop is to create an open space where presenters can propose a topic and/or argument for discussion, seek advice and receive feedback, gain support and direction on a potential and/or emerging project or paper in progress. It is intended to foster connections and a sense of a caring, helpful CMS community.

The session aims to be a place where participants can come with very early thoughts and ideas, and working drafts of papers, to throw them into a collegiate and encouraging environment with a view to exploring where they may go. These are categorised as ‘half-baked ideas’ (a description from the Lead’s own research mentor) and some examples of content could include the following:

• Specific questions that presenters want to explore further;
• A piece of literature/theory that they would like to talk through from a CMS viewpoint;
• Methodological musings;
• Early draft of a paper for critical friendship discussions; and/or
• Thought experiments.

The format is designed for participants at various stages of their career, including the earliest doctoral students through to the most established professors. Practitioners are also most welcome. It is hoped that those attending as presenters and as listeners/discussants will come with open and inquiring minds and that presenters and participants will allow their imaginations to be free, consider an expanse of possibilities, and build new and/or develop existing communities of like-minded colleagues who may help translate the work into practice to the benefit of critical management studies.

We intend to run hybrid sessions (Zoom/in-person) to include convenors, participants who present, and discussants.

Sessions will be 60-90 minutes with ‘ideas’ grouped together by the convening team with a Chair to help keep time/stimulate discussion as needed. Other conference attendees across streams are very welcome attend as listeners/discussants.

During the session, each idea should be explored through a 10-15 minute overview. This should not be a formal presentation, we prefer no slides but if appropriate, handouts or other visual/audio aids could be used.

The overview might include a short list of two to three questions or challenges for which they would like suggested direction, advice and/or discussion. Chair and other participants in the session should ask clarifying questions, offer suggestions, and help the presenters address hidden assumptions and potential challenges.

Submission guidelines

Please submit up to 500 word outlines of half-baked ideas in advance of the Conference so that the session chair(s) can prepare to instigate/stimulate discussion as needed.

You may also submit an early working draft of an article/chapter, but please indicate what aspects of the text you would particularly like comments on (rather than a full review).

Deadline for submissions – March 31st

Notification of acceptance – April 14^th

Any questions – victoria.pagan@newcastle.ac.uk

Convenor biographies

Lead Convenor – Dr Victoria Pagan, Senior Lecturer and Director of EDI, Newcastle University Business School, 5 Barrack Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK NE1 4SE victoria.pagan@newcastle.ac.uk

Victoria is Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management and Director of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion at Newcastle University Business School. Her research interests coalesce around knowledge- its generation, uses, and violations including epistemic violence and epistemic injustice. Her current work is an exploration of the impacts of the uses of non-disclosure agreements in a range of workplace contexts.

Convening Team

Professor Ilaria Boncori, University of Essex

Ilaria Boncori is a Professor in Management and Marketing at the University of Essex (UK), where she also holds the role of Deputy Dean Postgraduate Research Training. As a critical management scholar,  her research interests focus on diversity and equity in organizations and processes of organising. Her last book is entitled ‘Researching and Writing Differently’ (2022). She serves as co-Editor in Chief of the journal Culture and Organization.

Dr Carolyn Hunter, University of York

Carolyn is a senior lecturer at the School for Business and Society, University of York. She specialises in researching affect within the context of the creative industries, gender, culture management and fun and play at work. Recent publications explore the themes of humour, gender and happiness at work in journals such as Human Relations, Gender, Work and Organisation and Culture & Organization, and the book ‘Affect in Organization and Management’ co-edited with Dr Nina Kivinen.

Dr Jenny Davidson, Newcastle University

Jenny is a Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University Business School,  Co Director of the EMBA and holds a number of external Advisory Board and Non Exec Director roles. Since moving to work in HE eight years ago Jenny has worked primarily in Corporate and Executive Education and has a particular interest in education for sustainability.  Recent publications include  exploring the impact of a relational approach to launching an executive MBA in the midst of a global pandemic and partnering with the Women in Sustainability to explore the role of women’s voices in the Climate Change debate- Why Being Heard isn’t Enough https://womeninsustainability.net/wins-report

Convenors

Nisha Nair (Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh)

Neharika Vohra (IIM Ahmedabad)

About

Central to the discourse on diversity and inclusion is the need to explore marginalization and exclusion (Mor Barak, 2011). It has been suggested that researchers rarely consider marginalized people’s voices and experiences as relevant resources to foster understanding (Alm & Guttormsen, 2021). There is also the problem of unconscious misrepresentation of marginalized groups in organizational research, emerging from researcher ignorance or insensitivity (Chowdhury, 2022). Even when focusing on exclusion there has been a lack of integrating the voices of the marginalized in the academic discourse (Alm & Guttormsen, 2023). There is thus a need to center the voices of those marginalized if we are to truly move the needle from exclusion to inclusion both in business organizations as well as in education and academia.

One way in which marginalization and exclusion plays out is through subtle forms of denigration and exclusion conveyed by way of microaggressions (Sue et al., 2007; Sue, 2010). It has been pointed out that different forms of microaggressions also inhibit inclusion in the classroom (Nair & Good, 2020), conferences and in the academy (Sykes, 2021). A recent metaanalysis also points to the damaging effects of microaggressions on recipients’ physical and psychological health, in addition to perpetuating marginalization and exclusion (Costa et al., 2022).

The work on microaggressions gained popular attention largely through the early research of Sue and colleagues (Sue et al., 2007; Sue, Bucceri, Lin, Nadal, & Torino, 2007; Sue, Capodilupo, & Holder, 2008; Sue, Capodilupo, Nadal, & Torino, 2008). Microaggressions were initially studied through the axis of race, and defined as ‘brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults to the target person or group’ (Sue et al., 2007, p. 273). From this early focus on microaggressions focused on race, other forms and categories of microaggressions directed at other marginalized groups have entered the discourse which include microaggressions based on gender (Basford, Offermann, & Behrend, 2014; Gartner & Sterzing, 2016), ethnic minority status (Balsam et al., 2011; Clark et al., 2014), sexual orientation (Shelton & Delgado-Romero, 2011; Woodford, Howell, Kulick, & Silverschanz, 2013) and more recently that on intersectional identities (Lewis, Mendenhall, Harwood, & Huntt, 2016; Sterzing, Gartner, Woodford, & Fisher, 2017). Even so, the predominant lens of considering microaggressions remains that of race and gender. Here too, there are missing voices and forms of marginalization that are only recently beginning to get attention or have not yet been researched or studied.

Other than the often-studied categories of race and gender, attention also needs to be paid to other marginalized voices, be it disability and ableism (Kattari, Ingarfield, Hanna, McQueen, & Ross, 2020) or exclusion based on religious affiliation (Husain & Howard, 2017) and social class (Gray, Johnson, Kish-Gephart, & Tilton, 2018). While microaggressions directed at immigrants is recently being discussed (Sissoko & Nadal, 2021), disability and ableism have also been posed as barriers to inclusion in education (Kattari, Ingarfield, Hanna, McQueen, & Ross, 2020). Another category that is still missing in exploration is that of class-based microaggressions (Choi, Kim, & Evans, 2022; Gray, Johnson, Kish-Gephart, & Tilton, 2018).

Another emergent strain of exclusion and marginalization is centered around refugee identities and microaggressions directed at refugee students in school settings (Butler & Abawi, 2021), calling for a more intersectional viewing of microaggressions and marginalization. Beyond the categories of missing marginalized voices informing our understanding of exclusion and marginalization is the question of which narratives are dominant in defining the marginalized foci of exploration. Some have argued that the application of a Euro American perspective to understanding of culture and diversity can be limiting in other cultural contexts such as that of India, with considerations of caste-based violence remaining marginalized and invisible (Bhatia & Priya, 2021). It is posed that colonial legacies still dominate in Euro-American psychology with the Indian subcontinent voices, although a large proportion of the world population, still remaining marginalized and invisible in much of the psychology literature (Bhatia & Priya, 2021). Thus, central to incorporating the voices of the marginalized in the diversity and inclusion discourse, is also the broadening of frames used to understand what forms of marginalization exist in not just organizational studies, but particularly in academic framing of the discourse.

Thus, this workshop will be an attempt to center the discussion on marginalization from within the academic community by jointly exploring the different marginalized or misrepresented voices through both an in-depth exploration of varied microaggressions both known and yet to be explored and studied, as well as actively examining our own roles in perpetuating or signalizing exclusion and marginalization.

The workshop is thus meant for -

• Highlighting marginalized voices and centering the conversation of diversity and inclusion from the perspective of the marginalized
• Exploring the different forms of microaggressions in academia and address ways to combat them
• Anyone working on inclusion, exclusion, marginalization, microaggressions, etc., particularly those who are adopting or centering the marginalized perspectives
• Those exploring exclusion and marginalization that go beyond the dominant narratives of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
• Those interested in exploring alternate forms of marginalization and suppression of voices

The workshop will be in an in-person format only. It will run as a large focus group with participants sharing their own understanding of incorporating marginalized voices in academia and their research and explore the different forms in which marginalization may play out in our classrooms and academic community. The aim is also to help introspect on our collective blind spots or unconscious biases with regard to privileging certain identities or contributing to marginalization of some voices. The aim is also to have a dialogue and open conversations surfacing alternate forms of exclusion and marginalization yet to find root in the literature. The attempt will be to center marginalized voices and identify new spaces for exploration and awareness building in the discourse on exclusion and marginalization.

Submission guidelines

To be considered, please submit an application or abstract (minimum 500 words, maximum 1000 words, single spaced, 12point font) offering your expression of interest in the workshop and outlining connection to the workshop theme. Connections can take the form of existing research in allied areas or a proposal on how participation in the workshop can potentially be used and applied. Please send your expressions of interest for participating in the workshop to nnair@pitt.edu and neharika@iima.ac.in latest by March 31st, 2023.

Deadline for Submission: March 31st, 2023

Decision for Acceptance: April 14th, 2023

References

Alm, K., & Guttormsen, D.S.A. (2023). Enabling the voices of marginalized groups of people in theoretical business ethics research. Journal of Business Ethics,182: 303–320.

Balsam, K. F., Molina, Y., Beadnell, B. Simoni, J., Walters, K. (2011). Measuring multiple minority stress: The LGBT people of color. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 17 (2), 163-174.

Basford, T. E., Offermann, L. R., & Behrend, T. S. (2014). Do you see what I see? Perceptions of gender microaggressions in the workplace. Psychology of Women Quarterly 38 (3), 340-349.

Bhatia, S., & Priya, K. R. (2021). Coloniality and psychology: From silencing to re-centering marginalized voices in postcolonial times. Review of General Psychology, 25(4), 422–436. https://doi.org/10.1177/10892680211046507

Butler, A., Abawi, Z. (2021). Deconstructing citizenship and belonging: Refugee student integration and microaggressions in Ontario schools. In J.K. Corkett, C.L. Cho, A. Steele, (Eds.), Global perspectives on microaggressions in schools: Understanding and combating covert violence, (pp. 78-92). New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis. DOI:10.4324/9781003089681-8.

Choi, N.-Y., Kim, Y. H., & Evans, C. A. (2022). An examination of the psychology of working theory with employed Asian American women. The Counseling Psychologist, 50(8), 1074–1095. https://doi.org/10.1177/00110000221116885

Chowdhury, R. (2022). Misrepresentation of marginalized goups: A critique of epistemic neocolonialism. Journal of Business Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05229-4.

Clark, D. A., Kleiman, S., Spanierman, L. B., Isaac, P., & Poolokasingham, G. (2014). “Do you live in a teepee?” Aboriginal students’ experiences with racial microaggressions in Canada. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 7 (2), 112-125.

Costa, P. L., McDuffie, J. W., Brown, S. E. V., He, Y., Ikner, B. N., Sabat, I. E., & Miner, K. N. (2023). Microaggressions: mega problems or micro issues? A meta-analysis. Journal of community psychology, 51(1), 137–153. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22885.

Gartner, R. E., & Sterzing, P. R. (2016). Gender microaggressions as a gateway to sexual harassment and sexual assault: Expanding the conceptualization of youth sexual violence. Journal of Women and Social Work, 31(4), 491-503.

Gray, B., Johnson, T., Kish-Gephart, J., & Tilton, J. (2018). Identity work by first-generation college students to counteract class-based microaggressions. Organization Studies, 39(9), 1227–1250. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617736935

Husain, A., & Howard, S. (2017). Religious microaggressions: A case study of Muslim Americans. Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 26 (1-2), 139-152.

Kattari, S. K., Ingarfield, L., Hanna, M., McQueen, J., & Ross, K. (2020). Uncovering issues of ableism in social work education: a disability needs assessment. Social Work Education, 39:5, 599-616, DOI: 10.1080/02615479.2019.1699526.

Lewis, J. A., Mendenhall, R., Harwood, S. A., & Huntt, M. B. (2016). “Ain’t I a woman?” Perceived gendered racial microaggressions experienced by Black women. The Counseling Psychologist, 44 (5), 758–780.

Mor Barak, M. E. (2011). Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Nair, N., & Good, D. (2020). Diversity in the classroom: Microaggressions and their impact. In A. J. Murrell, J. L.

Petrie-Wyman, & A. Soudi (Eds.), Diversity Across the Disciplines: Research on People, Policy, Process, and Paradigm, pp.145-158. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Shelton, K., & Delgado-Romero, E. A. (2011). Sexual orientation microaggressions: The experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer clients in psychotherapy. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 58 (2), 210-221.

Sissoko, D. R. G., & Nadal, K. L. (2021). Microaggressions toward racial minority immigrants in the United States. In P. Tummala-Narra (Ed.), Trauma and racial minority immigrants: Turmoil, uncertainty, and resistance (pp. 85–102). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000214-006

Sterzing, P. R., Gartner, R. E., Woodford, M. R., & Fisher, C. M. (2017). Sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity microaggressions: Toward an intersectional framework for social work research. Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 26 (1/2), 81-94.

Sue, D. W. (2010). Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.

Sue, D. W., Bucceri, J. M., Lin, A. I., Nadal, K. L., & Torino, G. C. (2007). Racial microaggressions and the Asian American experience. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 13, 72–81.

Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., & Holder, A. M. B. (2008). Racial microaggressions in the life experience of Black Americans. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 39, 329–336.

Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Nadal, K. L., & Torino, G. (2008). Racial microaggressions and the power to impose reality. American Psychologist, 63: 277–279.

Sykes, B. L. (2021). Academic turning points: How microaggressions and macroaggressions inhibit diversity and inclusion in the academy. Race and Justice, 11(3): 288–300. https://doi.org/10.1177/21533687211001909.

Woodford, M. R. Howell, M. L., Kulick, A., & Silverschanz, P. (2013). "That's so Gay": Heterosexual male undergraduates and the perpetuation of sexual orientation microagressions on campus. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 28 (2), 416-435.

Convenor biographies

Nisha Nair, Clinical Assistant Professor of Business Administration, University of Pittsburgh, nnair@pitt.edu

Nisha Nair is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. She has previously taught as a visiting faculty at the Cotsakos College of Business at William Paterson University and served as a tenured faculty member at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore. Her research interests are primarily in the dark side of employee behavior, namely work alienation and deviance. She is also interested in diversity and inclusion and organizational development in the nonprofit sector.

Neharika Vohra, Professor, IIM Ahmedabad, neharika@iima.ac.in

Neharika Vohra is a Professor in Organizational Behavior area at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. She has published extensively in international and national journals and authored three books. She has served as Chairperson of IIM Ahmedabad's Doctoral Program, Editor of Vikalpa, and been on academic councils and boards of several leading universities of India. More recently, she has also served as the founding Vice Chancellor of Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University (a state university formed as an Act of the Delhi State). She has delivered leadership training for many multinational companies and educational institutions and holds extensive experience with the corporate sector and non-profits as an independent director, consultant, coach, and mentor.

Convenors

Juliana Mainard-Sardon (Nottingham Business School, NTU, UK)

Isabella Rega (Bournemouth University, UK)

Fabian Frenzel (Oxford Brookes University, UK)

Camila Moraes (University of Rio de Janeiro, UNIRIO, Brazil)

Bernardo de La Vega (Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, UNIRIO, Brazil)

Innocent Hakizimana Abubakar (Universidade Lúrio, School of Social and Human Sciences, Mozambique)

Andrea Medrado (University of Westminster, UK)

About

4 roundtables

1. Community entrepreneurship in favelas of Rio de Janeiro (90min)

2. Storymapping and community engagement (90min)

3. Organising youth activism through creative hubs (90min)

4. eVoices: scholar activism. (90min)

‘It is time to change the conversation. The past had better be large and demand little. The future had better come closer. Let’s enlarge the present and the space of the world. Let’s move on. Let’s travel with crude maps. Between theory and action there may be correspondence, but there is no sequence’.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South, 2014

Conducting impactful research in the Global South brings its own challenges. It calls us to ‘bridges and synergies with co-researchers, stakeholders and all constituencies’ (Contu, 2020, p.746). The relationship between researchers and research participants is always dynamic and produces unexpected results. As scholars-activists, we are setup with the question on how our research design ensure that marginalised voices shape methodological choices to expand bottom-up knowledge on alternative organisations?

So, with this commitment, our methodologies dialogues ‘would allow for the voices of the poor and the marginalised to be better reflected’ (Idemudia, 2011, p.13), understanding co-participants and collaborators contributions to research design and co-creation of space for activism. We believe that knowledge is constructed, reflected, and exchanged by ‘actual human interactions, meanings and processes that constitute real-life organisational settings’ (Rynes and Gephart, 2004, p. 455). We argue that knowledge is always socially situated (Harding, 2004), which emphasises participants’ embodied locations and the role of the researcher as an enabling one. Therefore, for these roundtables we will virtually travel to activists’ locations and connect with them in Brazil, Kenya, Mozambique, Tunisia, Turkey, and Lebanon.

Following the call of Girschik et al. to ‘promote alternative ideas, practices, and activities that may transform’ (2021, p.19) our views on the dynamic nature of our methodological choices with Global South communities, these 4 hybrid roundtables provide a rich source of reflection on methodological concerns, knowledge production, and activism. These sessions are dealing with: (1) community-based organisations in the Global South, working alongside activists. (2) a joint effort between scholars and organisations using participatory not extractives methodological approaches (3) Reflecting on scholar activism.

Roundtables

1. Mobile methods – to be on the move together (90min)

This roundtable explores the actions of entrepreneurial favela tour guides who are growing solidarity-based community tourism products in six favelas of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). We will learn straight from some of favela leaders and learn how they are organising alternative community tourism in favela that have grown from a critical rejection of overly commercial tourism. They will share their experiences, learning and challenges on working with a research team doing virtual tours. We’ll reflect on fieldwork relationships, expectations and roles.

Favela Tour Guides

Favela Providência: Cosme Felippsen

Favela Chapéu Mangueira: Dinei Medina

Favela Rocinha: Antonio Carlos Firmino

Favela Rocinha: Erik Martins

Favela Pavão, Pavãozinho & Cantagalo: Museum of Favela Marcia Souza

Research Collective: Observatório do Turismo em Favelas

2. Storymapping and community engagement (90min)

A panel of Global South researchers will present Storymapping as a methodological and communication tool that promotes community entrepreneurship, grassroot movements and research outcomes. There will be 3 different examples of Storymapping from Brazil, Mozambique and Kenya. We will show a toolkit for practitioners to use Storymapping as a tool to unpack sustainability, local heritage, and identities and promote reflection among rural and urban disadvantaged communities, gathering their experience gained working with communities. With Innocent Abubakar, Camila Moraes, Bernardo de La Vega & Isabella Rega.

3. Organising youth activism through creative hubs (90min)

The focus of the panel will be to unpack the connection between creative digital media practice, media literacy and the fight against marginalisation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region by youth activism. Three organisations will present their work and their perspective, and then a roundtable discussion on the above-mentioned topic.

Organisations

Boubli in Tunisia

Gate of Sun in Turkey

Shada Media Lab in Lebanon

4. eVoices: scholar activism. (90min)

In the session, we’ll show the animation “Portrait of Marielle”, produced in Kenya by young artivists within the AHRC eVoices project and a sister animation produced by N’gendo Mukii with Brazilian artists with support from the Goethe Institute in Salvador de Bahia, “Homage to Wangari Maathai”. After the screening, we’ll discuss the topic of artivism and how artivism can support a Global South dialogue to promote global social justice, inviting the young Brazilian and Kenyan artivists who made the animations in Nairobi and Rio de Janeiro, Prof Paula Callus and N’gendo Mukii, who conceived and led the workshops. We’ll talk about scholar-activism and launch the book South-to-South Communication: Media Activism and Artivism in the Global South byAndrea Medrado and Isabella Rega.

Portrait of Marielle (2018) is a short animation and experimental animation is a tribute to the Brazilian human-right activist and politician Marielle Franco, murdered on 14 March 2018 in Rio de Janeiro.

Submission guidelines

Please submit a short abstract (300 words) or a reflection outlining your interest on non-extractives methodological approaches, Alternatives Organisations, scholar activism and/or Global South research. Your reflection will be shared with panellists/activists. Please email Juliana Mainard-Sardon (juliana.mainard-sardon@ntu.ac.uk) by 31^st March 2023.

References

De Sousa Santos B (2014) Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. 1sr ed. London: Routledge.

Contu A (2020) Answering the crisis with intellectual activism: Making a difference as business schools’ scholars. Human Relations 73(5): 737–757

Harding S (ed.) (2004) The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. 1st ed. New York; Routledge.

Idemudia U (2011) Corporate social responsibility and developing countries: moving the critical CSR research agenda in Africa forward. Progress in Development Studies 11(1): 1–18.

Girschik V, Svystunova L and Lysova EI (2022) Transforming corporate social responsibilities: Toward an intellectual activist research agenda for micro-CSR research. Human Relations 75(1): 3–32. D

Medrado, A., & Rega, I. (2023). Media Activism, Artivism and the Fight Against Marginalisation in the Global South: South-to-South Communication (1st ed.). Routledge

Rynes S and Gephart RP (n.d.) From the Editors: Qualitative Research and the "Academy of Management Journal. The Academy of Management Journal 47(4): 454–462.

Convenor biographies

Dr Juliana Mainard-Sardon is a Research Fellow at the VCSE Data and Insights National Observatory at Nottingham Business School, NTU. Her research interest is to deepen our understanding of the VCSE’s organisations through their everyday experiences via ethnography, participative and qualitative methods of enquiry. She did a post-doc at the Faculty of Media and Communication (Bournemouth University) and researched about the impact of digital stories to develop community-enterprises initiatives in Brazil, Malaysia and Mozambique. She uses different participatory and visual methodologies to explore digital media tools for activism and social movements, for example, for a project with University of Nottingham at Ecological Reparation YouTube channel.

Dr Isabella Rega is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University (UK). Her research focuses on the role of digital media to promote community development and social change. She has been involved in research projects funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the European Commission. She led two AHRC International Networks, Sustainability and Local Heritage and eVoices: Redressing marginality and co-led the project DARE: Digital Arts for Refugee Engagement. She was also involved as Co-I in two GCRF projects, one funded by University of Leicester, Lockdown Stories and one by Bournemouth University, Sister Communities, both exploring the potential of community tourism and digital storytelling.

Dr Fabian Frenzel is a Reader at the Oxford Brookes University (UK). He is PI in the Lockdown Stories Project funded by University of Leicester (UK) and Co-I in the AHRC International Network titled Sustainability and Local Heritage with Bournemouth University (UK). In his research, he investigates qualitative indicators of tourism’s role in poverty alleviation specifically the non-monetary effects of tourism in low-income neighbourhoods. Fabian widely researched tour guides and the specificities of their role, effects of tourists and the importance of storytelling as empowerment tool. He considers the role of transnational mobilities, from activists to tourists, in the formation of a global social question with a focus on the way favelas are becoming destinations of a range of better-off travellers, in solidarity and volunteer travel and in favela tourism.

Panellist Biographies

Dr Camila Moraes is an Associate Professor at the Tourism and Heritage Department at University of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO, Brazil) where she coordinates the Program of Tutorial Education (PET) funded by the Ministry of Education (MEC), TurisData: Database on Tourism and Mobility Studies and the Observatory of Favela Tourism, where she monitors and collaborates with local tourism initiatives in favelas since 2010. She is Co-I in the Lockdown Stories Project, GCRF project, funded by University of Leicester and in the AHRC International Network titled Sustainability and Local Heritage with Bournemouth University. She is co-editor of the book ‘Brazilian Mobilities’(2020) which provides unique insight into the complex dynamics of mobilities in the emerging countries from the Global South.

Bernardo de La Vega has a master in Ecotourism and Conservation at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO, Brazil) and works as a research assistant in the Lockdown Stories Project at the Observatory of Favela Tourism. He is engaged in scientific and technological approaches for community education and empowerment; also coordinates a scientific divulgation project at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and act as an Art, Science and Technology Analyst at Serviço do Comércio do Rio de Janeiro (Sesc Rio). In his research, he explores and analyses the emergence of virtual tours initiatives in Brazil during the pandemic period, especially those in which the main attraction is nature itself, the (eco) tours.

Innocent Hakizimana Abubakar is a Lecturer of French Language at Universidade Lúrio, School of Social and Human Sciences (FCSH) in Mozambique and Director of the Indian Ocean Cultural and Religious Studies Centre (CECROI) based on Republic of Mozambique. He completed a Degree in French Language Teaching at Universidade Eduardo Mandane in Mozambique in 2010 and did a Masters in African Francophone Literatures in 2013 at University of KwaZulu-Natal (Republic of South Africa), where he is doing a PhD. His area of academic interests encompasses an interdisciplinary approach between literature, translation, culture, identity, heritage, and population mobility.

Andrea Medrado is a Lecturer at the School of Media and Communication, teaching media theory and practice modules for undergraduate and postgraduate students at University of Westminster. Her current research analyses the ways in which digital activists and artivists from marginalised communities in Global South countries (particularly Brazil and Kenya) can exchange experiences and lessons, promoting an exploration of mutuality between them. Finally, her research embraces decolonial, intersectional, and ethnographic theoretical and methodological approaches.

Convenors

Sadhvi Dar (Queen Mary University of London)

Angela Martinez Dy (Loughborough University London)

About

The discipline of business, management and organisation studies has been the subject of critique regarding Anglo-Eurocentricity and covert practices of exclusion of people from marginalised backgrounds and positionalities (Nkomo, 1992; 2021; Ibarra Colado, 2006; Dar, Liu, Dy and Brewis, 2021). This exclusion has been particularly evident in academic conference spaces, even those purported to be ‘critical’ or open to critical work, such as the International Critical Management Studies (ICMS) conference and the European Group of Organization Studies (EGOS). These two conferences, and decisions made by their leadership, have been challenged and contested by academics of colour and from the Global South, using scholar-activist tactics such as banner drops and open letters to call attention to the suite of issues of exclusion arising within the conferences.

The LAEMOS conference was initiated in 2006 in partnership with EGOS by a handful of Critical Management Studies scholars who built an alternative space for knowledge exchange and dialogue among Global South and Global North scholars. These efforts were led in particular by the late Mexican intellectual and activist, Eduardo Ibarra Colado. At its highpoint, the conference attracted hundreds of international scholars and students to share ideas, paper presentations, and conversation, based on the assumption that building bridges among diverse communities will create conditions for liberatory knowledge and struggles to flourish. The proposed installation will archive and narrate the story of LAEMOS, inviting participants to remember and restore the radical politics that underscored this effort and to displace the dehumanizing, colonial, and patriarchal structures that current conference organising reproduces.

In light of the ICMS 2022 conference theme, this proposed installation will aim to archive the birth and death of the LAEMOS conference. The founders were inspired to create an experimental bridge between Latin America and Europe through the creation of a conference space in which dialogue and debate were premised as a goal for re-humanizing a Eurocentric management and organisation studies (MOS). However, along its journey, the conference lost this focus and became a commercial enterprise. In 2018, the Decolonizing Alliance launched an open letter campaign to highlight this turn in direction and attracted over 100 signatories from across the world. However, in 2018 LAEMOS was closed down instead of being reformed. Today, there is little institutional memory about LAEMOS, its vision for an alternative space, and its sudden, unexpected, and undemocratic closure, leaving little scope for Global South-Global North discussions.

Our installation will seek to revive this history by archiving and displaying artifacts associated with LAEMOS and also to create a physical space with multi-media art to continue Ibarra Colado's mission of re-humanizing business and management studies. We will create original multimedia art pieces, conduct and present oral history interviews with people associated with LAEMOS at different points of its history. These will be incorporated into an informative and moving soundscape (for an example of a similar project by the sound artist, please see here and here). The exhibition will be designed to invite the engagement of a range of attendees, and through curiosity, surprise and delight, shift their affective experience of the ICMS 2023 conference.

The legacy of this project will be, foremost, a first-of-its-kind archive and exhibition of LAEMOS - a radical experiment in CMS conference organising that became a site of political struggle, debate and international dialogue about who belongs to the business and management studies community, as well as who it serves. ‘Recuerdos LAEMOS’ offers a meaningful and creative model to re-build the community of communities of which ICMS is composed through innovative artistic practice. The exhibition will also engage participants - some of  whom may know or may not know about LAEMOS - to dwell in a collective space that celebrates the possibility of political struggle within academia and beyond. The exhibition could be hosted by different conferences in the future as an ongoing project of collective memory and possibility for the CMS community. Lastly, the video and audio documentation of the project, including the original soundscape, can be housed on the ICMS conference website and shared via its social media.

Convenor biographies

The convenor team is composed of two women of colour scholar-activists at different career stages.

Dr Sadhvi Dar, Reader in Interdisciplinary Management and Organisation Studies, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London. Sadhvi's academic training crosses different fields of study including psychosocial and psychoanalytic psychology, fine art, management studies, and critical development studies. Since early on in her scholarship she has found inspiration in postcolonial studies, decolonial theory, chicana feminisms, and Black liberation philosophies. Her published work has sought to recover the silenced, marginalised, or appropriated voices in institutions. She is a founding member of the activist groups, Decolonizing Alliance and Building the Anti-Racist Classroom collective (BARC).

Dr Angela Martinez Dy is Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at Loughborough University London. Her expertise, research interests and communities of practice revolve around digital entrepreneurship, anti-racist intersectional cyberfeminism, and critical realist philosophy. She is a poet and scholar-activist with a track record of creating impact through building new initiatives and collaborating with community-based organisations, including Building the Anti-Racist Classroom (2018-2022).

Convenors

Dr Lara Bianchi (lara.bianchi@nottingham.ac.uk)

Prof Mihaela Kelemen

Dr Subhan Ullah

Prof Rob Caruana

Sue Moffat (Theatre Director at the NewVic Theatre)

About

While there is a thriving academic debate on stakeholder engagement as an organisational practice (Fu et al., 2022; Wood et al., 2021), a number of criticisms have been levied on its conceptual underpinnings. Critics argue that stakeholder engagement has been idealised in business and management studies (Hørving et al., 2018) and that current approaches of engagement are mere ‘management in disguise’ (Dillard and Vinnari, 2019, p. 21), often practiced by organisations for asymmetrical, instrumental and legitimacy purposes (Archel et al., 2011).

‘(L)abelled as fearfully radical in its early days’ (p. 35, Greenwood and Mir, 2019), stakeholder theory ended up being remarkably mainstream and conservative, with widespread processes of “objectification” (Kaufmann, 2022) of the engaged. The engager tends to project their desired outcomes onto the stakeholder being engaged; the latter becomes an object of the engagement process with little or no agency or voice. This is particularly the case of marginalised women stakeholders. Often considered as ‘silent stakeholders’ in light of their lack of voice and agency (Davila and Molina, 2017), women are de facto silenced by mainstream processes of engagement (Bondy, 2022) that tend to reinforce patriarchal norms and impede meaningful social changes. Dominant ways of organising and engaging tend to normalize exclusion and impede agency, by embedding patriarchy in their design.

We are a group of researchers from the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, University of Nottingham. Between Nov 2020 and May 2022, we delivered two international research projects (a UKRI GCRF and an ESRC IAA project) looking at the failures of traditional stakeholder engagement practice in conflict-affected areas. More info about the projects can be found at our webpage https://mcatnottingham.org/

Our research tried to unpack the links between conflict, gender equality and stakeholder engagement in fragile contexts, where women might normalise violence and rights abuses. This has a direct impact on their actual engagement in participatory processes. We introduce a more ethical stance on stakeholder engagement which is guided by feminist ideals, to contest dominant practices which are incapable of involving marginalised stakeholders in a meaningful manner (McCarthy and Muthuri, 2018).

We propose the delivery of an exhibition about our research journey.

• We plan to exhibit posters, pictures and videos from Mindanao (Philippines), Peshawar (Pakistan), and Stoke-on-Trent (UK), where our field research took place over the last three years.
• We will then present two “walls”: (1) one presenting quotes from research participants, showing lack of voice of marginalised stakeholders and shortfalls of current engagement practices; (2) and one with RQs on the validity of mainstream stakeholder theory, presenting and asking for alternative solutions

We would be keen to organise a public engagement workshop in conjunction with the exhibition. A policy briefing on meaningful stakeholder engagement in fragile zones will be presented, and a reflection on alternative practices of organisational engagement discussed.

We aim at orienting our discussion towards praxis that contributes to the development of solidarity in engagement settings.

References

Archel, P., Husillos, J., & Spence, C. (2011). The institutionalization of unaccountability: Loading the dice of corporate social responsibility discourse. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 36(6), 327–343

Bondy, K., Charles, A. (2020). Mitigating Stakeholder Marginalisation with the Relational Self. Journal of Business Ethics, 165, 67–82

Davila, A., Molina, C. (2017). From Silent to Salient Stakeholders: A Study of a Coffee Cooperative and the Dynamic of Social Relationships. Business & Society. 56(8):1195-1224

Dillard, J., Vinnari, E. (2019). Critical dialogical accountability: From accounting-based accountability to accountability-based accounting. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 1;62:16-38

Fu, L., Boehe, D.M., Orlitzky, M.O. (2022). Broad or Narrow Stakeholder Management? A Signaling Theory Perspective. Business & Society. 61:7

Greenwood, M., & Mir, R. (2019). Critical management studies and stakeholder theory: Possibilities for a critical stakeholder theory. In J. S. Harrison, J. B. Barney, R. E. Freeman, & R. A. Phillips (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of stakeholder theory. York University

Hørving, C., Andersen, S., Nielsen, A., Discursive tensions in CSR multi-stakeholder dialogue: A Foucauldian perspective, Journal of Business Ethics, 152 (2018), pp. 627-645

Kaufmann, L. (2022). Feminist Epistemology and Business Ethics. Business Ethics Quarterly, 32(4), 546-572

McCarthy, L., & Muthuri, J. N. (2018). Engaging Fringe Stakeholders in Business and Society Research: Applying Visual Participatory Research Methods. Business & Society, 57(1), 131–173

Wood, D.J., Mitchell, R.K., Agle, B.R., Bryan, L.M. (2021). Stakeholder Identification and Salience After 20 Years: Progress, Problems, and Prospects. Business & Society, 60(1):196-245