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
The ideas in this paper were initially explored at the Organisational Theatre summit, co- ordinated by learning Lab., Denmark at Lisegaarden near Copenhagen in March 2005. Working in collaboration with a group of actors and theatre practitioners; approaches to the phenomenon of rehearsal were discussed and a short play was devised and performed to communicate our findings to the rest of the conference. This paper arose from further reflection on those discussions and includes a transcript of the short play devised: The paper offers some reflections on the phenomenon of 'rehearsing' as practiced in theatre. It also represents our view on the usefulness of rehearsal as a model for the development of new products especially services and the possible value of this concept in the context of organizations, especially the management of professional service firms.
The aim of this paper is to point to the potential value of an approach to management based on the idea of the common good, as opposed to classical capitalism based on private ownership. Such an approach makes it possible to resist a pursuit of short term oriented gains and a maximization of narrowly defined profits, and, instead, to focus on humanistic values, as to adopt a long term perspective. The much cited notion of the “tragedy of the commons” was based on deficient material and argumentation, but, most of all, it completely disregards of the issue of management. Using a case study developed through a longitudinal action research project in a big service enterprise we call “Soplicex”, we present the strategic process grounded in learning, as well as the building of a strong structure centred on teams. The engagement of the employees was, originally, strongly oriented towards the idea of the common good. The consultants and researchers adopted this principle as the guiding rule in their work with the organization. Even though the process was interrupted by the takeover by a foreign investor, we show how the findings of the study remain relevant for alternative organizing and managing today and in the future. The conclusions of this paper reach further than just being reflections on a historical case study: a model of management is presented, concerned with the care and protection of the common good.
This article emerged from a personal need to reconcile the duality of my experience as a person working to raise awareness of equity issues, with that of being a female academic of mixed ethnicity. I discuss the formation of my subject as a developing sociologist, my attraction to the pre-reflexive identities of class, gender and ethnicity, and my struggle with the ambiguous nature of cultural cohesion. I move on to discuss how through conscious ways of knowing it is possible to reflexively act in ways that support substantive change. I argue outsiders-within, i.e. people like myself who grapple with such dual experiences, need not become “hot commodities in social institutions that want the illusion of difference without the difficult effort needed to change power relations” (Collins, 1999:88). Rather, I believe outsiders-within can knowingly achieve small but important substantive changes that lead to future systemic change.
In this essay, the author discusses the importance of self-work for diversity and social justice practitioners. In fact, she asserts that it is not only important for practitioners to increase their self-awareness; it is paramount to the success of the initiatives they are leading within any client system. As many organizations are still gripped by their fear of diversity efforts, the call for practitioners to embark on this in-depth exploration is loud and clear. Given the changed landscape from overt discrimination to covert forms of discrimination, this call to action includes being well versed in personal values, biases, assumptions, privileges and pain. The author articulates her point of view regarding these challenges as a scholar practitioner, in an attempt to renew diversity consultant’s commitment to their own personal development.
This paper contends that knowledge-making is a political act. In reflecting on the nature of personal narrative and its uses for refugee research, three insights emerge: first, just as the personal is political, so too, the political is personal; next, any storytelling is political in its attention to audience, and is inflected by the discourses available at the time; and finally, researchers must understand that if storying is to grapple with the richness and complexity of lived experience, it will probably be chaotic and messy, as well as clear and straightforward. Researchers wanting to investigate the sociology of refugee experiences might be well advised to ensure that the stories they gather from research participants are not too neat, too straightforward, too much reduced to bare essentials in their telling, lest the chance to allow the stories to become personally and politically resonant be lost. Further, researchers who are conscious of the political resonance of narrative are advised to ensure that they draw attention to the narrative element embedded in their research reports and papers by finding ways to communicate the narratives directly to the commissioning policy makers and politicians through verbal and pictorial seminar presentations, as well as through the reports themselves. These insights have implications for research processes (the gathering and analysis of data) and for the presentation and writing up of research documents.
The author explores the valorization of reflection by arguing for a reassessment of the use of reflection. She also discusses the implications of the notion of the parergon for the nature of the frame, definition and liminality. The author draws on blindness and seeing, on blindness and reflection, and writes about the body, the flesh, the resistance that is in the touch, and in the recovery of the physical as counterpoints to the passivity of reflection.
A theoretical perspective has been developed in Brazil, based on literary criticism and psychoanalysis, which proposes that there is a “perverse” subjectivity in Brazilians, in contrast to the classic European neurotics. Such subjectivity, forged throughout the 19th century, comes from the shaping of different social systems, as a function of the way in which Modernity was installed as a project. From literary pages to an academic interpretation of Brazil, this results in a country of contrasts, in which the “myth” of “cordial man”, which defines the Brazilian people as being generous and placid, is mixed with the harsh reality of its social inequality and violence. In the field of alterity, while internally such contrasts lead to a relationship that annuls the difference, the invisibility of the “other”, externally the relationship with foreigners is one of full acceptance that everything comes from outside, even in the field of ideas, the impacts of which are felt, for example, in Brazil’s business administration schools that are totally influenced by the American model. Starting with a reconstitution of the objective shaping of “perverse Brazil”, supported by both Brazilian and international works from the philosophic, psychoanalytical and literary fields, this article intends to show how, paradoxically, a contemporary reflection has been developing that points to the perversion of advanced modern societies, which leads to a questioning of why, despite such different cultural bases, these societies are also pointed out as being perverse nowadays. Although it is not intended to reach any definitive conclusions, this article starts from the hypothesis that this happened because local perverse features embraced universal enlightenment ideals that proved to be unsustainable with the globalization process of the modern capitalist project.
The purpose of this paper is to relate the rituals of death practised in the Monks’ Republic of Mount Athos in northern Greece, and to reflect on them as an academic. To do this fifty days and nights were spent on the Holy Mountain conducting ethnography; this enabled both the monks’ enactments to be captured and their interpretations recorded. The monastic rituals of death on Mount Athos are presented according to three emergent, paradoxical themes. These are that death is: both near and far; both a blessing and a tragedy; both uniting and dividing. The paper, the first study of monastic rituals of death on Mount Athos, then reflects on these themes in relation to being an academic, concluding that the limited commemoration of our colleagues in universities is intertwined with the slow death of the academic vocation.
Poetry and its use in the workplace has seen a growing interest in recent years, being used as a way to help those who work in organisational settings to explore and tell their stories. These can speak directly to individuals through the works of others or can emerge from organisational contexts to enable them to make sense of their own particular situations. Poetry has been used to explore, for example, organisational management practices, leadership, performance management, and to aid creative development and problem solving. It has also provided a means for individuals to understand how they interact with their organisational settings, or in some cases as a way to undertake research. Those who write poetry engage in the world as a way to allow their voice and those of others to be heard, as they explore and come to terms with their situated reality. This paper will therefore discuss the use of poetry in the workplace, before presenting three poems that use memory and metaphor to engage with organisational realities. It will then offer reflections and implications for organisational studies, before concluding that poetry provides a way to explore the hidden worlds of organisations that are often ignored or remain silent in the milieu of the taken for granted organisational rhetoric, and conversations.