Apologies for cross posting
Please find below a call for papers for a Conference stream on Conflict in Multinationals
5th Critical Management Studies Conference in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Manchester</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place>, 11-13 July 2007
Call for papers
Stream title: A Critical Perspective on the Contextual Constitution of Conflict in Multinational Corporations: actors and inequalities, political games and strategies of resistance
Stream Description
The operation of multinational companies (MNCs) across national, political, economic, religious, ethnic, lingual and other social divides make them a complex organisational form. This social complexity poses a serious challenge to researching and theorising the contextual constitution of agency and conflict in MNC. Whilst research in the International Business (IB) field dealing with internationalising organisations – has given some attention to the complexity of strategies, structures and processes in MNC, it has told us remarkably little about how micro-level processes unfold on the ground at the level of concrete actors (be they collective or individual ones) and how micro-level interaction is constituted. Such a lack of focus in IB can be explained by a lack of critical management perspective, a dominance of organisational-level units of analysis, the use of aggregate concepts and more generally by a missing awareness of the role of actors and agency. What is more, where actors are considered, the perspective tends to be head heavy focusing on managerial actors in top management positions. Such a neglect of actors and agency and/or a narrowed focus on key actors at the top, fails to recognise and understand how the internationalisation of business organisations goes hand in hand with new forms of political processes, sources of conflicts and resistance movements. Overall, there is a need to advance research and theory on how micro-level interaction in MNCs – with all its conflictual and political facets – is contextually constituted.
It is not only the field of IB that has failed to address on a broader scale the constitution of such processes in MNCs. To our knowledge there is also no coherent and substantial body of literature that has systematically applied insights from different organisation theories and other disciplines to constitutional issues of organisational behaviour – let alone the behavioural constitution of conflict and political gaming in MNCs. Instead studies dealing with different aspects of organisational behaviour in MNCs are rare and scattered across various disciplines, discourses and methodological traditions.
A few promising approaches focusing the contextual constitution of micro-level agency and micro-politics in MNCs can be found, for example, in recent works that draw on comparative organisational studies, institutionalist thought and labour process theory. Although these studies have their strength in focusing on actors as well as their societal or institutional embeddedness, they have often suffered from 'oversocialised' concepts of the actor – either restrained by cognitive, normative and regulative rules or alternatively by particular logics of national business systems/divergent capitalisms.
Focusing on the contextual constitution of agency in MNCs, seeing it as crucially constituted by interaction across organisational and social divides and by actors with a great diversity of experiences, attitudes, resources and social networks is of critical importance to understanding the nature of micro-political conflicts and games in MNCs as well as their underlying, inequalities and strategies of promotion and resistance.
Therefore this stream invites papers that bring together researchers interested in the various aspects of organisational agency in multinational companies (MNCs) and other types of multinational organisations. By inviting contributions from the broad range of social sciences including anthropology, business history, international business studies, organisational sociology, political science and social psychology we hope for new insights and more integrated views on the topic. The goal is, to bring together different conceptualisations on organisational agency in MNCs as well as different concepts as to how such micro-level agency is constituted and contested – be it through structures, institutions, (overt or tacit), forms of capitalism, cognitive/normative rules or concepts of rational choice. Given the rather scattered nature of contributions on the issue our stream is especially looking for both empirical based and conceptual orientated papers that consider the contextual constitution of agency in MNC with a particular focus on the contextual constitution of their conflicts and games. Such conflicts could evolve for instance around processes of cross border concession bargaining, cross-border model transfers, international regime shopping, corporate-wide standardisation policies or controversial investment projects.
Individual papers might have a focus on:
Different groups of actors and lines of conflict: This invites papers involved in identifying different groups of actors - collective as well as individual actors such as international works councils, labour and top management representatives, international work groups – as well as identifying lines and issues of coalition and antagonism among and between them.
MNC actor specific intra- and interorganisational interaction patterns: This invites papers accounting for patterns of organisational behaviour that are particularly related to operating across social and organisational divides and help to discover new lines of organisational conflicts, political games and resistance movements.
Rules, resources and rationalities peculiar to agency in MNC: This invites contributions that take a closer look at the particular constituting conditions of rules, resources and rationalities that shape the behaviour of actors in MNCs – particularly in micro-political conflicts and games in MNCs. Here the link of actor characteristics such as nationality, gender, educational background, professional experience, family situation, and career orientations, to patterns of organisational behaviour in MNCs are seen as crucial.
Strategic or structural changes in MNCs and organisational behaviour: This invites papers that look, for example, at changes in ownership, reorganisation measures, take-overs, and model transfers, and their impact on organisational behaviour – particularly new lines of conflict, micro-level processes of interest mobilisation, coalition building and resistance in MNCs.
Strategies of top down conflict management such as normative integration, diversity management or structural conflict management (by organisational control policies).
Details of the Convenors:
Florian Becker-Ritterspach
Department of International Business and <st1:placename w:st="on">Management</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Groningen</st1:city></st1:place>
Landeven <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">5
<st1:address w:st="on"><st1:street w:st="on">PO-Box</st1:street> 800</st1:address></st1:address></st1:street>
9700AV <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Groningen</st1:city></st1:place>
The Netherands
Tel. ++31 38 4235888 or
Tel. ++31 50 363-5142/3458
florian.br@gmx.de or
f.a.a.becker-ritterspach@rug.nl
Dr Christoph Dörrenbächer
Department of International Business and <st1:placename w:st="on">Management</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Groningen</st1:city></st1:place>
Landeven <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">5 PO-Box 800</st1:address></st1:street>
9700AV <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Groningen</st1:city></st1:place>
The Netherands
Tel. ++31 50 363 7338 or
Tel. ++49 491 999 2963 (home office)
c.dorrenbacher@rug.nl
Dr <st1:personname w:st="on">Diana Sharpe</st1:personname>
School of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Business</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Administration</st1:placename>
<st1:placename w:st="on">Monmouth</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">West Long Branch</st1:city>
<st1:state w:st="on">New Jersey</st1:state> <st1:postalcode w:st="on">07764</st1:postalcode></st1:place>
<st1:placename w:st="on">USA</st1:placename>
<st1:placename w:st="on">Visiting</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Fellow</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype> for Women and Work, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Rutgers University</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">New Jersey</st1:state>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">USA</st1:country-region></st1:place>.
Tel: ++1 732 571 3435
Fax: ++1 732 263 5518
dsharpe@monmouth.edu
Please send abstracts/papers to: c.dorrenbacher@rug.nl
Currently the convenors are in negotiations for a special issue of a related journal. Depending on the papers we will receive we also consider to publish an edited volume in 2008.
Timeline for paper submission:
Abstracts to Convenors (e-<st1:personname w:st="on">mail</st1:personname>) - 6 November 2006
Decisions on acceptance/rejection communicated to authors - 14 February 2007
Full papers to Convenors (e-<st1:personname w:st="on">mail</st1:personname>) - 28 April 2007
Abstracts must contain the following information:
Authors (including affiliation and contact details, with lead author clearly indicated)
Stream to which the abstract is submitted
Title
Body text
Maximum 300 words
All abstracts must be single-spaced, prepared using at least an 11-point Ariel font, with a left margin at least 1 inch for binding and be formatted for A4 paper (21cm * 29.7 cm).