Apologies for any cross posting:
A new issue of Human Relations is available online: Human Relations April 2015; Vol. 68, No. 4 - we hope you enjoy reading these articles.
The entire issue can be accessed online at: http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/4?etoc
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APRIL ISSUE ARTICLES
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The (non)distribution of leadership roles: Considering leadership practices and configurations
Samia Chreim
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/4/517?etoc
Abstract
This article draws on distributed leadership and leadership-as-practice perspectives to report on a comparative case analysis of leadership configurations. The context of acquisitions is used in the study. Attention is given to the practices of members of the two leadership teams – one from each of the acquiring and acquired organizations – as they attempted to integrate their practices and redistribute leadership roles. The findings show that, despite expectations that distributed leadership would be achieved, the emergent configurations varied across the firms and consisted of distributed leadership, distributed leaderlessness, overlapping leadership and non-distributed leadership. These configurations were underpinned by members' framings, relational practices and (non)exercise of agency. The article contributes to the leadership literature by proposing the notions of leadership deficits and leadership surpluses in configurations, by exploring how ambiguous leadership spaces are constructed, and by providing evidence of leadership models that vary in terms of conflict tractability. The study uncovers the limits of distributed leadership and shows that not all is well with distributed leadership models. The article also contributes to a broader understanding – than has been achieved through extant literature – of various potential leadership configurations that can emerge in the case of acquisitions and beyond.
The view from inside leadership configurations
Peter Gronn
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/4/545?etoc
Abstract
This article draws on distributed leadership and leadership-as-practice perspectives to report on a comparative case analysis of leadership configurations. The context of acquisitions is used in the study. Attention is given to the practices of members of the two leadership teams – one from each of the acquiring and acquired organizations – as they attempted to integrate their practices and redistribute leadership roles. The findings show that, despite expectations that distributed leadership would be achieved, the emergent configurations varied across the firms and consisted of distributed leadership, distributed leaderlessness, overlapping leadership and non-distributed leadership. These configurations were underpinned by members' framings, relational practices and (non)exercise of agency. The article contributes to the leadership literature by proposing the notions of leadership deficits and leadership surpluses in configurations, by exploring how ambiguous leadership spaces are constructed, and by providing evidence of leadership models that vary in terms of conflict tractability. The study uncovers the limits of distributed leadership and shows that not all is well with distributed leadership models. The article also contributes to a broader understanding – than has been achieved through extant literature – of various potential leadership configurations that can emerge in the case of acquisitions and beyond.
Competence in professional practice: A practice theory analysis of police and doctors
Ola Lindberg and Oscar Rantatalo
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/4/561?etoc
Abstract
This article outlines a theoretical understanding of competence as the inferred potential for desirable activity within a professional practice. By employing the concept of 'teleoaffective structure' as developed in Schatzki's practice theory, our study investigates how notions of competent and excellent professionals are defined in two separate practices in which highly qualified professionals share formal qualifications. The study is comparative and based on a total of 39 interviews carried out in the Swedish National Police Counter-Terrorist Unit (police) and with recruiters of medical interns (doctors) in Swedish healthcare. Results indicate that, despite obvious differences between the professional groups in the study, some remarkable similarities are apparent in what are regarded as high levels of competence. Surprisingly, technical expertise was downplayed as an indicator of high levels of competence in both practices. The professional groups emphasized flexibility, drive/ambition and social competence, as well as the ability to balance between being highly capable and being humble before others, including other groups of professionals as characteristics of excellence. Based on the results, the authors discuss a 'logic of excellence' that can be used to describe mechanisms of competence differentiation in professional practices from a practice theory perspective.
Beyond nostalgia: Identity work in corporate alumni networks
Thibaut Bardon, Emmanuel Josserand, and Florence Villesèche
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/4/583?etoc
Abstract
Although corporate alumni networks are a developing practice, academia has said very little about them and their members. In this article, our goal is to provide an account of how members of such networks construct themselves as alumni. To that end, we adopt a narrative approach to identity construction and empirically explore the identity work that the members of one corporate alumni network carry out in order to sustain their identification with a past organizational setting. Our case study leads us to document four 'identity stratagems' (Jenkins, 1996) through which members incorporate elements of their past professional experience into their self-narratives: nostalgia, reproduction, validation and combination. It thus allows for a better understanding of corporate alumni networks and their members, while also contributing to the broader identity literature by further documenting how organizational participants can incorporate elements of a past professional experience into their self-narratives.
Rhetoric of stability and change: The organizational identity work of institutional leadership
Benjamin D Golant, John AA Sillince, Charles Harvey, and Mairi Maclean
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/4/607?etoc
Abstract
This article highlights a dynamic and productive duality in the expression of organizational identity claims between demonstrating coherence with the past and responsiveness in the present. Informed by renewed interest in the concept of institutional leadership, which is precisely concerned with the management of this temporal duality, we argue that its reconciliation depends on active discursive intervention. Drawing from archive data of executive speeches at Procter & Gamble (P&G), we suggest that through dissociation, the rhetorical device to distinguish the claim of an accurate or essential interpretation of core and distinctive values from a peripheral or apparent understanding, leaders actively construct fresh potentialities for organizational change. We thereby develop new insights into the dynamic processes of organizational identity maintenance, revealing its capacity to be regenerative and a herald to the new.
Liminality, space and the importance of 'transitory dwelling places' at work
Harriet Shortt
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/4/633?etoc
Abstract
This article draws attention to the spaces in-between and employees' lived experiences of liminal spaces at work. It illustrates how and why liminal spaces are used and made meaningful by workers, in contrast to the dominant spaces that surround them. Consequently, the article extends the concept of liminality and argues that when liminal spaces are constructed, by workers, as vital and meaningful to their everyday lives they cease to be liminal spaces and instead become 'transitory dwelling places'. In order to examine this shift from ambiguous space to meaningful place, the works of Casey (1993), amongst others, are used to make further sense of the space/materiality/work nexus in organizational life. This article is based on empirical data gathered from a nine-month study of hairdressers working in hair salons and explores the function and meaning of liminal spaces used by hairdressers in their everyday lives. The contribution of this article is three-fold; it argues that space is not just about dominant spaces; it extends the concept of liminality; and in connection with the latter, it demonstrates how transitory dwelling places offer fertile ground in which we might further develop our knowledge of the lived experiences of space at work.
The challenge of sustaining organizational hybridity: The role of power and agency
Claudine Mangen and Marion Brivot
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/4/659?etoc
Abstract
Hybrid organizations harbor different and often conflicting institutional logics, thus facing the challenge of sustaining their hybridity. Crucial to overcoming this challenge is the identification process of organizational actors. We propose a theorization of how power relations affect this process. More specifically, we argue that an actor's power influences their own professional identity: an increase [decrease] in their power, via the heightened [diminished] control that this power provides them over organizational discourse, boosts [threatens] their identity. Our theorization has implications for the longevity of a newly adopted logic within an organization. If the new logic modifies incumbent power relations, the identities of (formerly and newly) powerful individuals are influenced, which may lead these individuals to promote or resist the new logic, thereby affecting the odds that the logic will survive within the organization. We illustrate our theorization with a case study in a professional service firm. Our study contributes to nascent research on hybrid organizations by emphasizing the role of power and agency in the longevity of hybridity.
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THIS MONTH'S FREE ACCESS ARTICLE
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Knowing work: Cultivating a practice-based epistemology of knowledge in organization studies
Jens Rennstam and Karen Lee Ashcraft
Human Relations 2014 67(1) 3–25. DOI: 10.1177/0018726713484182
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/67/1/3.full.pdf+html
This article will be free to access until 30 April 2015.
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SPECIAL ISSUE CALLS FOR PAPERS
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NEW: Conceptualising flexible careers across the life course
Submit by 1 March 2016
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Flexible%20careers.html
NEW: Global supply chains and social relations at work
Submit by 30 April 2016
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Global%20supply%20chains.html
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RECENT ONLINEFIRST PREVIEW ARTICLES
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Cultural identity change in expatriates: A social network perspective
Jina Mao and Yan Shen
Human Relations 0018726714561699, first published on March 31, 2015 as doi:10.1177/0018726714561699
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/30/0018726714561699.abstract
Understanding the work passion–performance relationship: The mediating role of organizational identification and moderating role of fit at work
Marina N Astakhova and Gayle Porter
Human Relations 0018726714555204, first published on March 26, 2015 as doi:10.1177/0018726714555204
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/26/0018726714555204.abstract
What is the relationship between long working hours, over-employment, under-employment and the subjective well-being of workers? Longitudinal evidence from the UK
David Angrave and Andy Charlwood
Human Relations 0018726714559752, first published on March 26, 2015 as doi:10.1177/0018726714559752
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/26/0018726714559752.abstract
Reflexivity in practice: Tools and conditions for developing organizational authorship
Mara Gorli, Davide Nicolini, and Giuseppe Scaratti
Human Relations 0018726714556156, first published on March 25, 2015 as doi:10.1177/0018726714556156
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/24/0018726714556156.abstract
The collective endorsement of James Meredith: Initiating a leader identity construction process
John H Humphreys, Milorad M Novicevic, Jack Smothers, Stephanie S Pane Haden, Mario Hayek, Wallace A Williams, Jr, Jennifer D Oyler, and Russell W Clayton
Human Relations 0018726714556292, first published on March 24, 2015 as doi:10.1177/0018726714556292
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/24/0018726714556292.abstract
Explaining leadership in family firms: Reflexivity, social conditioning and institutional complexity
Tim Edwards and Elina Meliou
Human Relations 0018726714554468, first published on March 18, 2015 as doi:10.1177/0018726714554468
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/18/0018726714554468.abstract
Economic inequality of the badli workers of Bangladesh: Contested entitlements and a 'perpetually temporary' life-world
Fahreen Alamgir and George Cairns
Human Relations 0018726714559433, first published on March 18, 2015 as doi:10.1177/0018726714559433
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/18/0018726714559433.abstract
Fairness, envy, guilt and greed: Building equity considerations into agency theory
Alexander Pepper, Tom Gosling, and Julie Gore
Human Relations 0018726714554663, first published on March 17, 2015 as doi:10.1177/0018726714554663
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/17/0018726714554663.abstract
Who am I? Mothers' shifting identities, loss and sensemaking after workplace
Shireen Kanji and Emma Cahusac
Human Relations 0018726714557336, first published on March 16, 2015 as doi:10.1177/0018726714557336
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/16/0018726714557336.abstract
Re-reading masculine organization: Phallic, testicular and seminal metaphors
Stephen A Linstead and Garance Maréchal
Human Relations 0018726714558146, first published on March 5, 2015 as doi:10.1177/0018726714558146
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/05/0018726714558146.abstract
With best wishes,
Claire Castle
Managing Editor, Human Relations
Email: c.castle@tavinstitute.org
Website: www.humanrelationsjournal.org
OnlineFirst forthcoming articles: http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/recent
Submission guidance: http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/submit_paper.html