Apologies for any cross posting:
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October issue articles
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A new issue of Human Relations is available online: October 2014; Vol. 67, No. 10 - we hope you enjoy reading these articles.
The entire issue can be accessed online at: http://hum.sagepub.com/content/67/10?etoc
Defined by our hierarchy? How hierarchical positions shape our identifications and well-being at work
Kate E Horton, Charlotte R McClelland, and Mark A Griffin
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/67/10/1167?etoc
'I wish I had . . .': Target reflections on responses to workplace mistreatment
Denise Salin, Aino Tenhiälä, Marie-Élène Roberge, and Jennifer L Berdahl
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/67/10/1189?etoc
Who is 'the middle manager'?
Nancy Harding, Hugh Lee, and Jackie Ford
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/67/10/1213?etoc
Writing materiality into management and organization studies through and with Luce Irigaray
Marianna Fotaki, Beverly Dawn Metcalfe, and Nancy Harding
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/67/10/1239?etoc
Negative emotions in informal feedback: The benefits of disappointment and drawbacks of anger
Genevieve Johnson and Shane Connelly
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/67/10/1265?etoc
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October free-access article
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This article will be free to access until 31 October 2014:
Talking work in a bank: A study of organizing properties of leadership in work interactions
Magnus Larsson and Susanne E Lundholm
Human Relations August 2013 vol. 66 no. 8 1101-1129; Published online before print April 23, 2013, doi: 10.1177/0018726712465452
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/66/8/1101.full.pdf+html
Abstract
Leadership is generally seen not only as an inspiring and motivating force but also as having important organizing properties. Despite this common assumption, the organizing properties of leadership have not yet been clarified sufficiently or demonstrated empirically. In this study, such organizing properties are revealed through a detailed analysis of one single work episode, drawn from an ethnographic study of leadership in a bank. Using conversation analysis, the study shows that leadership, understood as an interpersonal influence process, enables and facilitates organizing processes. As expected, this involves establishment of episodic closures, but also resistance to such. Further, the study shows important influence and organizing functions of situated collective identities-in-interaction, which render the involved individuals interdependent.
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Conducting global team-based ethnography: Methodological challenges and practical methods
Paula Jarzabkowski, Rebecca Bednarek, and Laure Cabantous
Human Relations 0018726714535449, first published on September 25, 2014 as doi:10.1177/0018726714535449
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/09/03/0018726714535449.abstract
Abstract
Ethnography has often been seen as the province of the lone researcher; however, increasingly management scholars are examining global phenomena, necessitating a shift to global team-based ethnography. This shift presents some fundamental methodological challenges, as well as practical issues of method, that have not been examined in the literature on organizational research methods. That is the focus of this article. We first outline the methodological implications of a shift from single researcher to team ethnography, and from single case site to the multiple sites that constitute global ethnography. Then we present a detailed explanation of a global team-based ethnography that we conducted over three years. Our study of the global reinsurance industry involved a team of five ethnographers conducting fieldwork in 25 organizations across 15 countries. We outline three central challenges we encountered: team division of labour, team sharing and constructing a global ethnographic object. The article concludes by suggesting that global team-based ethnography provides important insights into global phenomena, such as regulation, finance and climate change among others, that are of interest to management scholars.
The politics of identity in organizational ethnographic research: Ethnicity and tropicalist intrusions
Rafael Alcadipani, Robert Westwood, and Alexandre Rosa
Human Relations 0018726714541161, first published on September 25, 2014 as doi:10.1177/0018726714541161
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/09/03/0018726714541161.abstract
Abstract
The article addresses aspects of the politics of identity that became manifest in the researcher–researched relationships in the context of an organizational ethnographic field study at a UK-based printing business. As the fieldwork commenced, it quickly became apparent that the researcher's Brazilian nationality and Latin American ethnic identity were being performed and responded to in certain specific and problematic ways. This study analyzes the dynamics of identity work and identity politics in ethnographic and other qualitative research. However, the specific contribution of this article is that it examines the questions that arise when the typical structures and patterns of research practice – which are themselves embedded in a spatialized politics of knowledge – are reversed. Historically, research in the social sciences (including management and organization studies) has been conducted by researchers from the center in relation to others in the non-center. Furthermore, in so doing, epistemologies, theories and methods developed in and for the center are deployed to examine and explain phenomena in those other places. This article addresses the question of what happens when the researcher is from the non-center and is conducting research on those from the center. This inversion is increasingly common and has significant implications not only for research practice and the politics of knowledge but also for international business relations more generally.
Category predication work, discursive leadership and strategic sensemaking
Andrea Whittle, William Housley, Alan Gilchrist, Frank Mueller, and Peter Lenney
Human Relations 0018726714528253, first published on August 5, 2014 as doi:10.1177/0018726714528253
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/08/04/0018726714528253.abstract
Abstract
Categorization is known to play an important role in organizations because categories 'frame' situations in particular ways, informing managerial sensemaking and enabling managerial intervention. In this article, we advance existing work by examining the role of categorization practices in discursive leadership during periods of strategic change. Drawing on data from an ethnographic action research study of a strategic change initiative in a multi-national corporation, we use membership categorization analysis to develop a framework for studying 'category predicates' − defined as the stock of organizational knowledge and associated reasoning procedures concerning the kinds of activities, attributes, rights, responsibilities, expectations, and so on, that are 'tied' or 'bound' to organizational categories. Our analysis shows that discursive leadership enabled a radical shift in sensemaking about organizational structure categories through a process of 'frame-breaking' and 're-framing'. In so doing, the leader co-constructed a 'definition of the situation' that built a compelling vision and concrete plan for strategic change. We go on to trace the organizational consequences and material outcomes of this shift in sensemaking for the company in question. We conclude by arguing that 'category predication work' comprises a key leadership competence and plays an important role in organizational and strategic change processes.
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Claire Castle
Managing Editor, Human Relations
Email: c.castle@tavinstitute.org
Website: www.humanrelationsjournal.org
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