Cultivating a dystopian imagination cannot be made from within the paradigmatic science of organization theory, hereafter paradigm. The source of the doom cultivation has to originate from the outside and be allowed inside as a basic premise. Otherwise, the clash between the premises of the paradigm and nature cannot be overcome. In this article, I position myself as an anti-essen-tialist, arguing that the world needs to be redescribed time and again (Czarniawska, 2001). Impor-tantly, there needs to be richness among the redescription attempts. To achieve richness in stories about the world, the pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty had hope in the ironists (Rorty, 1989). In this essay, I even put my hope in the ironists who are misfits, outcasts, and drunkards, and use the documentary “To Stay Alive” and the musician Miland “Mille” Petrozza as case in point.

Rooted in symbolic anthropology, Lluís Duch’s anthropological framework explores humanity’s mediated relationship with culture and reality. This text reflects on Duch’s intellectual legacy, emphasizing his key concepts, including mediation, ambiguity, and hosting structures, to illuminate human experiences, such as illness. Drawing from personal accounts and interdisciplinary critiques, the text addresses Duch’s contributions and their application in health anthropology, highlighting areas like symbolism and relationality. The text also offers recommendations for dialogue with global anthropologies, ethnographic methods, and the extension of Duch’s ideas to gender and non-human symbolic realms.

David Boje’s influence on management and organization has been innovative and inspirational. His critical postmodern storytelling breathes life into the field, transforming complex theories into vibrant, dynamic explorations. However, this article is primarily a story of mentorship, from the personal to the field level. David’s kind and gently assertive mentorship has inspired students and colleagues to push boundaries, think critically, and develop a scientific field while advocating for social justice and practical solutions to real-world problems.

This article begins with a reflective account of George Kelly’s profound influence on the authors’ thinking and practice, aligning closely with the central theme of this collection. We illustrate the personal impact of Kelly’s ideas, demonstrating how his work not only reshapes the theore tical approaches of researchers but also profoundly influences their personal development. This starting point for the paper introduces readers to Kelly’s theory by grounding it in lived experience while highlighting its broader implications for understanding human sensemaking and behavior.
Next, drawing on Kelly’s biography and his Personal Construct Theory (PCT), the article examines his contributions to understanding sensemaking through a systematic and epistemological lens. Kelly’s PCT does not merely offer a theory but provides a comprehensive framework for inquiry – one that bridges qualitative and quantitative methodologies and emphasizes the dynamic interplay between constructs, validation, and identity. Kelly’s epistemology redefines knowledge creation as an iterative, construct­driven process of sensemaking.
This article underscores the transformative potential of Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) for applications in counselling, coaching, and organizational contexts. In conclusion, we offer Kelly’s legacy as a bridge between theory and practice, enabling a richer understanding of both personal and organizational dynamics.

This article explores the influence of avant-garde composer John Cage (1912–1992) on organizational studies, proposing that his work provides a rich source for understanding organizational theory. Cage’s concepts – such as indeterminacy, silence, process orientation, experimentation, active involvement, and feedback – offer alternative methods for studying organizations, indicating that the sources of organizational knowledge can extend beyond economics and management to incorporate ancient disciplines like music and philosophy. Rather than metaphorically applying musical principles, the article directly examines how Cage’s aesthetic principles that guide both his music compositions and his conference lectures can serve as a foundation for organizational dynamics. By treating sound and silence as organizational tools, Cage’s work encourages a shift from traditional structures toward embracing indeterminacy and uncertainty within organizations. In doing so, it highlights that the organizational dimension lacks any predetermined objective but rather happens. Concluding with an “open mic” view of organizational theory, the study advocates for a broader, more experimental approach to organizational knowledge and emphasizes an evolving, responsive practice that mirrors Cage’s own innovative legacy.

In this essay on research and writing, the non-intentionality of “hospitality” is highlighted.
Grounded in Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics and Jacques Derrida’s response to that ethics, “Other” as the first philosophy is explored as the ground for doing research. Research is explored here as the “I” gazed upon by the “Other” rather than as an action implemented by the researcher’s will. The author describes how Bob Cooper inspired him to question the organization/disorganization relationship. However, the encounter with Levinas’ ethics caused me to subsume critique of Organization Studies to an even more radical research ethics, wherein investigation is not based on authorial intentionality but on a hospitality-based perspective. The ethics of writing-Other, wherein Other gazes upon one’s efforts, is juxtaposed with the contemporary norms of university research. Tamara is embraced as a source of hospitality.

Article based on lecture at the Kraków University of Economics on receiving an honorary doctorate by Professor Andrzej K. Koźmiński, December 11, 2024.

In this chapter, I investigate a specific aspect of the relationship between literature and social
sciences. I believe that the insights of a novelistic imagination become translated into popular
culture and, in this way, reach social practices. Thus, social sciences need to pay attention to
this process as it constitutes an important part of the circle of representation and formation
that connects literature with social practices.

This paper contributes to the current debate on the societal relevance of social sciences in general and management studies in particular. Using a narrative framework, we critique what we view an oversimplified discussion of Modes 1 or 2 knowledge production and provide a more complex depiction of various professional academic identities, along with their relation to cer-tain institutional structures and discourses. We show how different narratives relate to – and produce – different forms of professional identities and societal relevance. Drawing on the work of Zygmunt Bauman, we explore three main narratives for defining and creating societal rele-vance in management studies, each with its specific scholarly identities and institutional pre­re quisites: a modernist narrative in which societal relevance is defined by powerful external stakeholders; an interpretive narrative tied to local concerns and interests; and a consumption­ ­oriented narrative in which demand and the will to pay for academic services regulate what is considered relevant. We conclude that societal relevance presents itself to the social sciences in various shapes and forms. This leads to a multiplicity of narratives informing a variety of complementary professional academic identities.

Faculty performance assessments increasingly use the h-index. Designed to account for publication quantity and effect, the h-index informs organizational discussions and internal narratives. However, its use in business schools is problematic for two reasons. First, tension exists between the positivist approach of management and the reflexive approach of critical management studies. Second, the use of the h-index is hegemonic, privileging one group and construct over another. Given the power asymmetry between senior and junior faculty, discussions around one’s h-index could be unavoidable. Using Google Scholar, this study compared the h-index values of those in critical management studies with those in management. Examining these data descriptively revealed that the h-index of those in critical research were greater than those in management at the assistant, associate, and full professor levels. Incorporating these findings, even if skeptical of positivism, is constructive for the advancement and continuation of critical business research.

One ongoing theme in management theory focuses on mitigating the dehumanizing effects of organizational systems and related forms power over employees. Perhaps paradoxically, the alienating tendencies of neoliberalism resulted in various humanist and emancipatory theories intended to mitigate that alienation, which operate in a way that almost exclusively benefits the organization and subtly yet profoundly subjugates the worker. Critiques of contemporary management theory and practice, most notably by critical management studies and psychoanalytic theory, made important contributions in revealing many of the pernicious mechanisms and resulting effects of human relations approaches. However, in our assessment these critiques still struggle to respond to the emergent socioeconomic and political structures of neoliberalism. As an alternative, this article considers Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) work on faciality in order to re-examine the form and function of those structures in a way that explains their perniciousness and suggests that there is a space within those structures for a more liberated form of subjectivity.

We explore a discourse structurational approach and employ a planetary system metaphor in order to examine complex business networks within contemporary globalizing, consumer cultures. This conceptual/commentary paper reviews discourse structuration and employs a celestial metaphor to comment on strategy including reference to consumption, business marketing and business network research. Each sphere in the metaphorical constellation is characterised by a complex duality of deep structures and surface activities co-determined and mutually constituted through the medium of modulated actors’ schemas, norms and other ‘technologies’ of their practical consciousness. Market consumption is a galaxy comprised of complex, inter-acting, multiple structurations where everything co-determines everything else through mutual gravitational influence. We argue that consumption is comparable to a black hole at the centre of the system dragging all matter into its centre, warping and distorting structures and processes until eventually destroying and assimilating them altogether. Implications and consequences are discussed in terms of the increasing hegemony of consumption and consequent commodification of other spheres with via a discourse structuration approach concentrating upon strategy and marketing.

The idea of the reviews section is that it should cross (between and beyond) some of the traditional boundaries of organizational and management 'science'. It will include reviews of published material (paper and web-based), performance, art, installations, architecture, political events, etc. - whatever may contribute to discussion around the themes of particular editions of the journal. The idea about the reviewers is that they should be interesting people with something to say/show/exhibit that will engage the interest and enthusiasm of others. Hence, we are seeking pieces that provoke, stimulate and engage.

This discussion piece sets the tone for this new journal in its narrative presentation form. It will run over two issues and is open to include feedback from readers. In debating the case for TAMARA to represent either a) a postmodern science approach to organisational analysis or b) a postmodern aesthetic appreciation, the two participants reflect on the relevance of critical theory to their life and work. Hence rather than the intellectual exchange taking place in a disembodied form, they situate their intellectual history via issues of social location and lived experience. They reflect on the integral connection between theory and practice with the objective of furthering their commitment to effecting social change. The first short article takes the form of initially introducing the authors and then moves to a discussion of the role of critical pedagogy. The detailed references to teaching content are broached in order to demonstrate the efficacy of critical analysis for pedagogical purposes; not to focus on the relative achievement of the individual lecturers involved. The second longer article entails a debate of central relevance to the Journal, addressing: what type of orientation a critical postmodern analysis of organisational politics might take? The discussion begins with a dialogue between the two protagonists on the pros and cons of adopting a scientific approach. The focus then switches to situating the plurality of postmodernism; analysing the `affirmative' versus `sceptical' opposition. The contribution of the `White French Pomo Boys' is interrogated in relation to the late modernist thesis. Finally, Boje proposes an eclectic integration between modernist and postmodernist influences in the name of `narrative ethics'. Bissett responds, outlining the dilemmas of employing unreconstructed narratives. She deconstructs the notion of the aesthetic as a modernist cultural category, in order to propose a postmodern `political poetic' alternative..

In This room of Tamara, we seek dialogs that reflect upon our reflections, and seek to understand our future that is Not-yet.
If you want to conduct a dialog with someone, please let us know, so we can plan some space for you.You could include some photos, but get their permission

When asked to serve on the TAMARA Editorial Board, we were honored. To be able to work and theorize with colleagues in such diverse and important fields as organizational science, critical postmodernism, green theory and left economics was a rare treat. We come from the tradition of "critical pedagogy." For us, critical pedagogy stands at the nexus of critical/postmodern/poststructuralist theories, multicultural theories, cultural studies and struggles for social justice and a progressive politics within education. And truly, we expect to learn more from our TAMARA colleagues and submitters than they will from us. And to then be asked to react to the important research presented in "Think Global, Act Local," by de Cieri, Wolfram Cox & Fenwick, was even more of an honor; for these researchers truly "push the envelope" of organizational science-specifically, by examining "critical participation" within the context of "strategic international human resource management" (SIHRM). In this essay, we choose to react to de Cieri, Wolfram Cox & Fenwick by going "old school." For us, critical pedagogy began with el abuleito, intelectual, Compañero Paulo Freire. While he was Brazilian, and we are Chicano and European American, as left educationalists, we feel an enduring political, cultural and educational bond with Freire. Although he died in 1997, his connection to all educational progressives, and all who are interested in advancing struggles for social justice and dignity among all women and men, we must always remember the legacy and importance of his years of living his theory and theorizing his practice.