Dear all,
Please find below a call for contributions to 'The VALUE STREAM' that will
run as part of the Critical Management Studies Workshop to be held on
August 7-8 just prior to the 2008 Academy of Management Meeting in Los
Angeles (short abstract deadline February 20).
The Value Stream
Critical Management Studies Workshop (workshop details below)
Conveners:
Sarah Stookey,
stookey@verizon.net,
Craig Prichard,
c.prichard@massey.ac.nz
For managers the problem of how economic value is created, appropriated
and distributed can be both problematic and taken for granted. For
researchers and scholars it is a core conceptual and empirical puzzle. In
recent times its profile in management and organization studies has been
raised significantly. It was the subject of the most cited academic papers
of the 1990s (Grant, 1996; Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998; Huselid, 1995) and
since then the search for concepts that identify new value forms and the
dynamics of intangible, tacit and knowledge-based capabilities and
resources has intensified and been extended (Sollo and Winter, 2002;
Jacobies and Winter, 2005).
Outside academic circles ‘value’ has received even greater attention. A
broad new liberal movement has swept the western economies bringing with
it increased financialization of social and political life. This new
liberalism includes shareholder activism, the development of the personal
finance industry, new financial tools and modes of assessment for
organizations, and the State-sponsored marketization and consumerization
of most social and political issues. All this has extended the centrality
of the consumer and the individual as become the primary locus of
responsibility over health, happiness and wellbeing. How to ‘add value’
to one’s life, one’s relationships, one enterprise and one’s nation has
become standardised vernacular. At the same time we have witnessed
corporate scandals, product recalls, state corruption, a broad debt and
housing crisis, and growing exclusion of many from market society.
But the new liberalism has not gone unopposed. Counter movements have
sprung up under the banners of ‘fair trade’, ‘anti-globalization’ and more
recently ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’. Under such banners
multiple groups and constituencies including farmers, small business
people and consumers have confronted world leaders, corporations and supra-
national bureaucrats. Alongside direct action such movements are also
contributing to the debate on ‘value’, raising popular consciousness about
the social, political, economic and environmental genealogies of food,
clothing, shelter, technologies and energy use. In some cases they have
forced States, firms and individuals to reconsider narrow definitions that
simply identify value in terms of prices, things and monetary units. They
propose redefining value to incorporate political, social and ecological
relationships between people and between people and their environments.
Some of this work challenges institutionalized ‘governance' structures
that organize the distribution of economic surplus in the family, the firm
and the economy.
Management researchers’ response to these new relational definitions of
value has been mixed. For many the liberal definition of value is
unquestioned. The global sourcing of profits, the neo-colonialism of
expatriate management, the immiseration of life in the intensive factory
regimes in cheap labour locations, and disparities of wealth between those
at various points in these global value chains are understood as global
strategic choices based on competitive resources and capabilities, or as
workplace cultural dynamics, or (when things don’t go as planned) as
issues of organizational trust and commitment.
Of course many management academics question this orthodoxy. Sumantra
Ghoshal’s strident call (2004) to overhaul the management curriculum in
ways that problematise the liberal shift, and re-establish the legitimacy
of the corporation as an institution is a compelling example to the
contrary. Other colleagues have voiced similar concerns. Jay Barney,
senior spokesperson for the resource-based view, made the follow comment
on the incongruity of relations at the core of the firm to a strategic
management audience in 2006 (AoM Program Session #: 548, Atlanta, 2006).
"One of the strong features of the resource-based view of the firm in
strategic management, which is moving to refine and develop its rigorous
engagement with the relationship between resources and capabilities that
firms develop and the profits that flow from this, is [analysis of] the
distributive processes involved. This might be framed in terms of the
question of property rights. [Here] you recognise that when stakeholders
make investments in a firm, and the major investors are always employees
and suppliers, there is an anticipation of a return on residual cash flow.
You realize that employees are not legitimately able to make a claim on
this residual return."
What is Barney suggesting? He is not calling for a reconsideration of the
wage labour relation. But he is asking his colleagues to extend far
greater theoretical and empirical sensitivity to those institutionalized
practices that direct economic surpluses in some directions and not
others. Another interpretation might be that the problem of distributive
justice, fuelled by new liberalism’s contending movements, has begun to
reach into the work of senior researchers in management and organization
studies (see Mackey, Mackey and Barney, 2007).
Yet despite the connection with the concerns of critical management
studies (exploitation and distributive justice) the problem of value has
been largely left to mainstream researchers. Critical management
researchers have tended to ignore the dramatic and broad ‘rise of value’
in both its liberal or critical formulations or to regard it as new modes
of power relations (exceptions include for example Levy, 2005). This
workshop stream is a response to this imbalance. It aims to advance
discussion, thinking and particularly writing that both revisits existing
critical approaches to value in organization studies, and to extend these
in new and engaging directions. With this in mind we include here a brief
list of possible stream topics.
The stream would welcome contributions that extend and refine, either
empirically, analytically, theoretically or politically, critical analysis
of:
New and existing approaches to understanding labour as this relates to the
production, appropriation and distribution of value in organizational
processes. For example papers might critically address the problematics of
immaterial, affective or emotional labour (e.g. Arvidsson, 2005; Harney,
2006; Harvie, 2006).
New and existing critical approaches to the analysis of human capital in
organizations and industries. Papers might for example tackle critically
the problematics
of 'Knowledge', 'Intellectual', 'Cultural', 'Symbolic', 'Social' Capital
(e.g. O'Donnell et al, 2006; Hairong, 2003).
New and existing forms of 'value', 'rent' and 'class' analysis as this
relates to management and organizational processes (Fleetwood, 2001; Jones
and Spicer, 2006; Prichard, 2007; Sorensen, 2000, Stookey, 2006).
Works that challenge prominent forms of organizational knowledge and
practice concerned with value management (e.g. Coff, 1997, 1999; Lowendal
et al, 2001; Tsai and Ghoshal, 1998).
Works that explore the transfer and distribution of value as part of the
cultural, political and symbolic dynamics of organizations particularly
those that articulate and organize gender, race, ethnic, disable-bodied
relations and identities. For example papers might critically address from
a value or class perspective (e.g. Farad, 2003) the tensions and struggles
between family and work relations (the so-called 'work-life balance'
issue).
Works that develop new categories or forms of value analyses that promote
equitable and stable forms of wealth distribution in organizations,
industries and economies (e.g. Collins, 1995).
The motivation for the workshop is simple: neither the PDW nor the main
program events at the AOM give us enough opportunity to engage in in-depth
discussion of papers in critical management studies. So the workshop will
be organized as a series of parallel streams (working groups). Each stream
will consist of people who have contributed papers on a well-defined topic
(perhaps with some invited discussants), and the group will work together
over the course of the day-and-a-half, going around the room discussing
the papers in turn. In order to maximize discussion, authors will not
present their own papers, but rather participants will be asked to present
and discuss each others' papers. We will also arrange a couple of plenary
sessions and some social time where all the participants come together.
We are yet to finalize the cost of the workshop, but based on present
estimates, we anticipate that the workshop will cost between $400 and $550
for each participant, depending on whether they choose to stay for two
nights or three, and whether they choose single or double rooms. The fee
will include meals (lunch and dinner on 7th and all 3 meals on 8th). We
will finalize the details quickly on this front.
If you wish to be part of this stream, please submit a 250 word abstract
to
stookey@verizon.net, and
c.prichard@massey.ac.nz by February 20th,
2008. Please note that submissions can be concurrently on review at the
regular AOM 2008 conference as well. The submission of an abstract
constitutes a good-faith agreement to submit a full paper for the stream
by June 1, 2008 if the paper is accepted. The final paper should be less
than 8000 words in length.
DATES
Feb 20: Abstracts of papers submitted to stream conveners
March 10: Submissions accepted/rejected
June 15: Full papers submitted by this date for inclusion in the Workshop.
___________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________
CRITICAL MANAGEMENT STUDIES RESEARCH WORKSHOP,
ANAHEIM, AUGUST 7-8, 2008
The Critical Management Studies Interest Group is conducting a research
workshop as part of our program of activities at the 2008 Academy of
Management meetings in Anaheim, California. Paul Adler, Raza Mir, and
Sarah Stookey are organizing the workshop.
The motivation for the workshop is simple: neither the regular PDW nor the
main program events at the AOM give us enough opportunity to engage in in-
depth discussion of papers in critical management studies. So the workshop
will be organized as a series of parallel streams (working groups). Each
stream will consist of people who have contributed papers on a well-
defined topic (perhaps with some invited discussants), and the group will
work together over the course of the day-and-a-half, going around the room
discussing the papers in turn.
In order to maximize discussion, authors will not present their own
papers, but rather participants will be asked to present and discuss other
presenters‚ papers. We will also arrange a couple of plenary sessions and
some social time when all the participants come together.
Based on an earlier call for proposals and a subsequent screening process,
the following 10 streams are being organized. Clicking on the following
titles will take you to the corresponding stream descriptions and
materials:
The Business of War: Corporate Imperialism and the Management of Global
Violence. Convener: Bobby Banerjee and Martyna Sliwa.
Technological Innovation: Emancipation, Domination, or Something In-
Between? Conveners: Richard Hull and Bill Kaghan
The "New Spirit of Capitalism" and the CMS Project. Conveners: Peter
Fleming and Andre Spicer
Critical Story Work and its Resistance To Colonizing Narratives.
Conveners: David Boje, Carolyn Gardner,Grace Ann Rosile and Jo Tyler
Critical Gender and Diversity Issues in Management and Organization
Theory. Conveners: Regine Bendl, Yvonne Benschop, Joanne Martin, and
Judith Pringle
The Value Stream. Conveners: Sarah Stookey and Craig Prichard
Critical Marketing. Conveners: Per Skålén, Martin Fougère, Mona Moufahim,
and Peter Svensson
Corporate Social Illusion: Foxes Minding the Geese. Conveners: David
Jacobs, Richard Pin
Critical Perspectives on China. Conveners: Zhichang Zhu, Chris Smith, Jos
Gamble and Yuan Li
Using Psychoanalytic Theory to Re-Conceptualize Organization Studies.
Convener: Marianna Fotaki
Papers submitted and presented to the Workshop can also be submitted and
presented to the main Academy conference. We are working on finding low-
cost accommodations. Based on present estimates, we anticipate that the
workshop will cost between $400 and $550 for each participant, depending
on whether they choose to stay for two nights or three, and whether they
choose singe or double rooms. The fee will include meals (lunch and
dinner on 7th and all 3 meals on 8th). We will finalize the details
quickly on this front.
The deadlines for the workshop are as follows:
Feb 20: Abstracts of papers to be submitted to stream
June 15: Full papers to be submitted for posting on the Workshop website
For more details, please contact:
Paul Adler
padler@usc.edu
Raza Mir
MirR@wpunj.edu
Sarah Stookey
stookey@verizon.net
References
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