This paper was originally written as part fulfilment of a Management BA degree at the University of Lincoln, United Kingdom, 2003. It is a mini-consultancy project, analysing the Lincoln Co-op using critical and postmodern tools and theories including Boje’s (2002, 2002a) framework of metatheatre, storytelling (Boje, 2001; Gabriel, 2000; Nymark, 2000) and the notion of reflexivity (Currie, 2003; Golding and Currie, 2000; Woolgar, 1991). It stems from undergraduate work and discussions with both academics and employees of the Lincoln Co-op at the University. It is based upon personal experiences, desk-based research and ethnographic type research within Lincoln Co-operative organisation.

This is a parody of a song by Gilbert and Sullivan. It is meant to provide a model of postmodern reading.

Many transnational scholars agree that the nation-state is not disappearing because of globalization, but rather is being reorganized, in part, to reflect the interests of a global marketplace. Postmodern perspectives on borders have been critiqued for ignoring, if not obscuring, this point. The idea is that postmodernism’s emphasis on hybridity makes the notion of boundaries defunct and leads to the conclusion that the nation-state is irrelevant as a unit of analysis. This is problematic for those who now see any discussion of power and violence regarding the border as impossible to formulate. This paper aims to assuage some deep concerns regarding a postmodern analysis of globalization, the nation-state, and the border. In addition, the shortcomings of both critics and recent “reformers” of hybridity are examined, along with the far reaching value of using a postmodern approach in U.S.-Mexico border studies. Finally, the implications of postmodernism with regards to social change in this era of lobalization are discussed.

What does consulting and teaching look like from the sociopolitical spaces of privilege, ambivalence and oppression? Giving voice to visible social identities is explored through narrative exploration of teacher and student voices. Who can raise these issues and who cannot? Pedagogically, how can and should we as trainers address these issues? We discuss consulting and teaching about privilege and oppression across race, ethnicity and gender in psychology programs at urban universities in eastern and western United States. The three issues explored include: a) teaching about privilege and oppression from a visibly privileged social identity; b) acknowledging the ambiguities of privilege and oppression of minorities and immigrants from a sociopolitical space of ambivalence; and c) mentoring and modeling on issues of privilege and oppression from a visibly oppressed social identity. Consulting from this postmodernist perspective is different and more effective when members of all level of the organizations embrace readiness, patience and commitment toward organizational change. This approach is more aligned with the current shifts towards globalization and diversification occurring within organizations today.

Analyzing discourses is potentially a very powerful method for social research, and any such analysis should have a powerful voice, but to be truly powerful it must be able to have something to contribute towards policy. In this paper I reflect on discourse analysis broadly and how it might engage policy makers more fully. The paper suggests why policy-makers in Western nations might not listen to, or resist the demonstration of how discursive forces shape their experiences and indeed their understanding of the plight of refugees. This problem can be traced to Western society’s reliance on a discourse of modernism which conflicts with policy-makers need to critically examine issues of inclusion, racism and integration as a result of large refugee intakes. As analysts we need to make sure we too move to something postmodern, and rather than a broad attack on policy-makers we need to find a way to engage new inclusive discourses to unpack discursive instances in local settings in a collaborative fashion and allow a space for policy-makers to not only read and act on the discursive research findings, but engage in the very tenets of social ‘constructionism’.

This article proposes that poetry provides a method for doing and writing inquiry that is potentially dialogical. Whilst much postmodern scholarship is written in a way that still privileges a monological author, it is argued that poetry contributes to dialogical inquiry in three ways. In foregrounding poetic form, the use of tropes and poetic license with word order and completion, poetry provides a more spacious writing medium for readers to join with writer in joint construction of meanings. In attending to how writing touches and affects people, poetry provides a written forum that is not governed by linear argument or conclusion. Finally, Poetry provides a written medium that facilitates moving around and about a subject in surprising and illuminating ways.

The interest in societal forms of entrepreneurship has increased in recent decades, emphasizing different kinds of prefixed such as ―social‖ ―ecological‖, ―sustainable‖, ―regional‖. In this article societal and social is at stake. Taking a point of departure in the prefix stories of entrepreneurship we read a wish to break with the grand narrative of entrepreneurship as well as attempts to feed into and draw legitimacy from the grand narrative. In this article we take a point of departure in an initiative taken in Sweden to introduce and finance a program labeled ―Societal entrepreneurship‖. The purpose is to create knowledge about, as well as conditions for, initiatives aiming at improving what is missing or does not work in public structures, and finding new and innovative solutions in order to create an economically, socially and ecologically sustainable society. Applying Burke‘s pentad it is illustrated that the grand narrative of entrepreneurship consists of the heroic entrepreneur (agent) who creates a kingdom (act) by way of establishing a company (agency) on the market in order to make a profit and contribute to growth (purpose). Applying the concept of Tamara, introduced by Boje, it is further illustrated how the grand narrative of entrepreneurship emphasizes capitalism, rationality and hierarchy in line with the epoch of industrialization, whilst the antenarrative of societal entrepreneurship gives priority to both premodern and postmodern discourses. The importance of community, of non-economic values, artisan craftsmanship is stressed, but also of how societal structures must be changed. The story of societal entrepreneurship thus de-centers human agency seeking to create instability as well as openings for enactment.

Democracy needs to defend itself from the many immediate threats - technology, imperialism, global economic powers, human passivity and reactionary religion. Reactionary religion has taken the lead worldwide in rejecting pluralism and democracy, viewing both values as gateways to secularism and decadence. Both modernism and postmodernism have failed to fully address the success of the continued political advances of the religious right worldwide. A new, postmodern politics of meaning is needed to address basic human needs currently served by the cosmology of traditional religious orthodoxy. Progressive thinkers in philosophy, religion and in critical theory must work dialectically to retain the good of religion and spirituality, the need for ultimate meaning, and the challenge of reducing negative, anti-democratic impulses. These impulses are embodied in theocracy and a fear of life. Until religion is totally reinvented or evolves to a higher level we will have to defend many democratic values from religious extremists. A live and let live political philosophy is a good defense of democracy.

The issue of workplace identity – how and why employees develop an attachment with and affinity for aspects of their work environment, and how work and non-work influences interact in the identification process, is a topic of substantial interest among both critical and ‗mainstream‘ management studies researchers (cf. Marks & Thompson, 2010). However, these streams of research have largely developed separately, with little cross-fertilization of ideas. This is also true of developments within the criticalmanagement community (e.g., between labour-process and postmodernist approaches). This paper seeks to remedy this situation by analyzing what I call ‗contextualist‘, ‗discursive‘, and mainstream approaches to the study of identity, with an eye towards synthesizing their best ideas. This may help management scholars to develop an understanding of identity that will empower lower-level employees at work.

Standing Conference for Management and Organization Inquiry (sc’Moi) is coming undone, in the process of ending its 25-year conference run, and being dismembered, its members leaving for other conferences. The purpose of my talk is to develop a Hegel and Žižek understanding of the dialectic of storytelling of sc’MOI. Žižek claims that Hegelian dialectics is making a comeback because it is uniquely suited to our time. Unlike the usual erroneous oversimplified formula reading of Hegel (thesis-antithesis- synthesis), I will assert there is no synthesis, Marx rejection of ‘Spirit’ and Adorno’s turning dialectic into a pursuit of objectivity, leaves us with a shallow dialectics. By reclaiming the ‘Spirit’ in relation to system and science as well as materiality in Hegelian dialect, we have a new way to understand sc’MOI. Spirit is not about religion, but rather it is the experience of Reason in action and Being. Spirit stands in dialectic relation to the system principles (abstract, schemata), and to system that becomes science. In addition, Spirit’s relation to system is worked out in space, in time, in mattering, or what Karen Barad calls spacetimemattering. Looking at the history of sc’MOI, I will claim sc’MOI never was a whole system, but rather a systemicity of unmerged and unfinalized parts in search of a whole. sc’MOI is was part of the umbrella conference (International Academy of Business Disciplines) until Boje was beheaded as IABD conference president, and three divisions of IABD jumped ship to start sc’MOI in 2004, and held its first conference in 2005. From 1993 till 2004, that means sc’MOI was only a potentiality, a shadowy outline of a conference, not actually coordinating its own location, audiovisuals, meals, coffee, setting its own schedule and business meeting, etc. Even after 2005, sc’MOI did not get its legs, did not merge its processes, did not sustain economically or socially as a robust alternative to the Academy of Management (AOM) conference, ever its nemesis. As sc’MOI prepares to dismember its membership and re member its past, sc’MOI is without beginning, middle, and end. Its Spirit lives on, as do its materials: proceedings, paper presentations, receipts for room rentals and airline seats. sc’MOI is a movement, an opposition to modernity in its critical postmodernism, to corporate university, to TQM, reengineering, AACSB, to war, to globalization, to humanism in its posthumanism, and to unsustainability. Best to dismember before all of sc’MOI is unsustainable, its systemicity unraveling, its unfulfilled science, and only the sc’MOI Spirit actually can live on.