Two influential perspectives in organizational studies that focus on different aspects of enabling, constraining, and forming organizational action are the notion of sensemaking and the influence of material objects on organizational functioning. This paper explores the coupling of these two perspectives, which often are seen as opposite. Based on evidence from two case studies, we argue that these perspectives, taken together, unlock a deeper understanding of the processes that unfold in organizations and call attention to the materiality of sensemaking as important to understanding organizations.

Academic ‘labour’ within the Higher Education landscape is changing as universities are increasingly managed as business organisations. In the contemporary neoliberal academic context, departments and individuals are required to develop forms of accountability based on quantitative metrics regarding performance, budgets, human resource management and income generation. Drawing from Foucauldian theories of power, this article explores the contentious implementation of workload allocation models in the UK Higher Education sector not only as an illustration of a superimposed managerial tool of control but also as an instrument of resistance. This article suggests that in order to counteract the systematic failure of neoliberal academia at the individual and collective level, these performance management tools can be used as forms of empowerment and resistance. Further, it is recommended that these instruments are designed in a collaborative way to ensure fair and transparent allocations of tasks and responsibilities, and to avoid unmanageable workloads.

Trends in organisation and in organisational activity, which have resulted in increasing dependence on the discretionary efforts, initiatives and judgements of employees, have left management with the problem of how to ensure that such discretion is exercised appropriately in the service of the organisation. The Human Resource Management approach, relying as it does on strategic integration and underpinned by a value-driven approach seemed to be an ideal mechanism, particularly when designed as encouragement to commitment via social identification and a shared sense of meaning.

If culture is the enacted manifestation of organisational identity, management aspiration is that the 'good' employee is one who will learn the cultural reality and enact it appropriately. Expectations of 'good' employees are that they will exhibit not only the appropriate competence, but will also possess the necessary commitment, via identification and emotional engagement, so that they can be trusted to regulate themselves, take decisions that are in the best interests of the organisation and even go that extra mile for the company and the customer. This paper gives attention to such expectations and explores their implications.

From 'the learning organization', through creating cultures of fun and play, to commissioning beautifully designed office spaces, many contemporary organizations are trying to tap into the aesthetic sensibilities of their employees by building an organizational 'experience' that is conducive to aesthetic expression in order to unleash the power of their collective, creative, artistic, unconscious. Drawing on psychoanalytical theory and primary, qualitative data, we offer a counter argument, highlighting the contested nature of the unconscious; therefore calling into question precisely what is being 'unleashed' during these processes of creativity. Additionally, we will postulate that the role of skill, ability and craft expertise is at least as important as aesthetic expression. Finally, adopting an object relations perspective, we will argue that the enactment of creative expression is frequently suffused with anxiety - either necessitating the existence of a facilitating environment which assists the individual or group to operate from the depressive position (often the location of creative, synergistic space).

This article describes and considers the process and outcome of an experiential workshop held in the 'Art & Aesthetics of the Unconscious' stream at the second 'Art of Management & Organization Conference', Paris, 2004. The workshop was designed to introduce participants to an art therapy approach to explore the organizations in which they work. Through this process the intention was to consider and explore the potential of using art therapy in the context of organizational management. With particular focus on considering how it may assist with interventions where surfacing the unconscious material or psychodynamics of the organization may be useful in gaining insight into the organization and shape helpful responses.

Amid the disempowerment and marginalization faced by young girls, character development programs are being implemented to change the course for girls by fostering strong and empowered feminine identities. I explore the challenges of implementing one such program through my ethnographic and community engaged research with a character development program designed to equip 3rd through 5th grade girls with the skills and confidence they need to grow into empowered women. Through a qualitative analysis, I empirically demonstrate the importance of community engaged scholarship for uniting theory with practice. My analysis extends research exploring community engaged, empowerment programs by highlighting the ways empowerment is experienced differently by every girl. I point to the tension between empowerment in theory and in practice, specifically addressing the assumptions: 1) of girls’ uniform experience base, 2) about the influence of the GRL message among competing others, and 3) regarding the utility of certain strategies in diverse situations, all of which undermine the process of empowerment. I describe my experience working with the founder of the organization to revise the curriculum and offer a set of practical implications for this and similar organizations to productively respond to the tensions between the theory and practice of empowerment. Finally, I argue for a conceptual shift in the way we theorize empowerment as an ongoing and constantly negotiated state of engagement, rather than an endpoint or stable state of being.

Building on conceptions of democratic engagement, we explicate the epistemological and political commitments of engaged scholarship tied to deliberative democracy that responds to the neutrality challenge of doing impactful political work without advocating for a particular political position. The Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation (CPD) provides a model of democratic engagement by serving as an impartial resource for its community, in part by training students to be facilitators of public processes. This type of democratic engagement can cultivate mutual benefits for students, professors, universities, community organizations, and citizens. We offer a principle of passionate impartiality for guiding process-design and facilitation. Passionately impartial scholars and students are passionate about their community, democracy, and solving problems but are nonetheless committed to serving a primarily impartial, process-focused role in order to improve local communication practices. Drawing on challenges from critical theory and the academy, we offer a nuanced account of what it means to negotiate the tensions between serving an impartial role while also upholding democratic values of equality and inclusion.

The paper discusses organizational planning and decision making as situated materialsemiotic practices in which various local and non-local meaningful elements (e.g. texts and photos) are invocated and resemiotized. The discussion is based on an analysis of a seminar meeting where different stakeholders (researchers, family members, etc.) could put forward their ideas and wishes about the facilities of a soon-to-be-built care home for people with brain injury. In other words, the seminar was part of a wider diagnostic endeavor that was to be started in a specially designed building. The future occupants themselves could not be present to express any views; their point of view was mediated by others. The paper discusses with what communicative resources this mediation was done and how the performance was geared to the audience present. The analytical focus will be how in one talk the speaker makes a transition from sharing experiences to making specific suggestions.

I work with the concept of apparatuses of material storytelling as a way to study the enactment of ‘the future school’. The article analyses a project at a school that involved students, teachers and leaders building models for learning spaces to inspire the architect who were to design a new building for grades 4-6. The analysis is theoretically informed by ‘new materialist thinking’. The analysis show how the project, while producing differentiated learning spaces and ideas about the learning student, configures and reconfigures the organization known as ‘a school’ in ways that highlight contemporary problems concerning authority, management and the constitution of ‘the student’, in an education system which is increasingly focused on learning-centred educational management on the students desire and motivation for learning.

The paper provides an analysis of mechanisms leading to the commodification of emotions. Describing key cultural processes, characteristic of the culture of late capitalism -- psychologization of an individual subject and economization of social spheres of life -- I identify the relation between emotions and the market in each of those processes. I argue that in order to intentionally engage emotions into work and market-oriented activity, they need to be rendered objects of a “specific kind of expert knowledge, characteristic of new “specialists of emotions.” Construction of the knowledge on emotions requires their detachment from an individual subject, their ontologization and commensuration. However, operationalized and designed emotions need to be authentically felt and experienced by an individual, since the affective engagement is expected to generate, directly and indirectly, an economic outcome. Therefore, the detachment of emotions requires complementation with its mirror mechanism - reattachment of emotions into a subject. In this review paper, I depict both mechanisms, using examples from the fields of HR management, marketing and market research.