Browsing by Author "Czarniawska, Barbara"

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Accounting and gender across times and places: An excursion into fiction
(2007-11-26T10:18:42Z) Czarniawska, Barbara
Action nets for waste prevention
(Gothenburg Research Institute, 2014-03) Corvellec, Hervé; Czarniawska, Barbara; Department of Service Management and Service Studies, Lund University and Gothenburg Research Institute
Although waste prevention is considered the best possible option in the European waste-hierarchy model, it is not always clear what is meant by “waste prevention”. This chapter presents three cases of waste prevention, selected to illustrate the variety of these practices: a waste-management company selling waste-prevention services, the opportunity for Swedish householders to opt out of unaddressed promotional material, and a car-sharing program. The analysis is informed by an action net perspective, focusing on the way organizing comprises connecting actions, often prior to or in conflict with networking among actors. Through each of these examples, we demonstrate how waste prevention depends on specific physical artifacts and infrastructures and is the result of specific ways of connecting actions. In conclusion, we emphasize that waste prevention rests on the emergence of new modes and patterns of interactions that both build and disrupt the existing institutional order of consumption. We also stress that waste prevention as it is discussed in this chapter is not a step forward in the European waste hierarchy but constitutes a break with the traditional notion of waste management.
Emerging Institutions: Pyramids or Anthills?
(2006) Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
In the present text, an institution is understood to be an (observable) pattern of collective action, justified by a corresponding social norm. By this definition, an institution emerges slowly, although it may be helped or hindered by various specific acts. From this perspective, an institutional entrepreneur is an oxymoron, at least in principle. In practice, however, there are and always have been people trying to create institutions. This paper describes the emergence of London School of Economics and Political Science as an institution and analyzes its founders and its supporters during crises as institutional entrepreneurs. A tentative theory of the phenomenon of institutional entrepreneurship inspired by an actor-network theory is then tested on two other cases described in brief.
Femmes Fatales in Finance, or Women and the City
(2004) Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
This paper concerns the representations of women working with finances in popular culture. Popular culture retrieves plots from a common repertoire, and in this way transmits ideals and furnishes descriptions of reality, but it also teaches practices and provides a means through which practices might be understood. Apart from portraying its own era, it also perpetuates strong plots, i.e. established and repeated patterns of emplotment. One such strong plot seems to be persistent in popular culture's representations of women working with finances. Their fate is depicted along the lines known best from Euripides' tragedies: they transgress “women’s place” and commit heroic or mad deeds. By doing so, they might save the city (Athens in the case of Euripides, the City in finance stories), but afterwards they must either die or be sent back. The main part of this paper is dedicated to a case that has been reported in two different ways, one supporting the strong plot and one defying it, thus offering material for reflection on the complexity of both the influence of popular culture and the fate of women in finances.
Is It Possible To Lift Oneself By The Hair? And If Not, Why Is It Worth Trying
(2004) Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
The title of this text alludes to the legend of Baron Munchausen, who reportedly did many impossible things. A change of a system by the same system belongs to such impossible tasks, as shown by Niklas Luhmann's theory of autopoietic systems. Reforming organizational structures and processes is a doomed enterprise, and yet this text suggests that it might be worth undertaking. Various examples of reforms demonstrate that their result is frustration and a host of unintended consequences. Many of unintended consequences might, however, prove beneficial and worth permanenting. Reforms should therefore be treated as periods of purposefully created instability, making the present system transparent and vulnerable. Such an induced instability might lead to innovation and invention, and therefore aid a spontaneous change.
Isolationist Automorphism, Relentless Isomorphism, or Merciless Idealism. The Cultural Context of City Management in Warsaw, Stockholm and Rome
(2001) Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
This paper employs some results of a study of city management in Warsaw, Stockholm, and Rome by setting them in a cultural context. Contrary to the common opinion, the difficulties in effective city management in Warsaw at the end of the 1990s did no stem from its communist past, but from a veneered sedimentation of a rationalist-legalist frame of action. This contrasts sharply with a pragmatist attitude typical for the city management in Stockholm, but is similar, to a degree, to management processes in Rome. While all three cities follow the same models, the necessity of fitting them into a local frame produces quite local versions of management practices
Lyckad integration? Skönlitterära beskrivningar av invandringen i Sverige 1945-2017
(Gothenburg Research Institute, 2020) Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
Metaphors and the Cultural Context of organizing
(2001) Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
When the linguistic turn reached organization studies, it manifested itself in the first place by the interest in metaphors. The crucial role of these tropes for theory building was emphasized, and their place in the very process of organizing was highlighted. In this paper, I attempt to nuance these findings by showing more complex aspects of the use of metaphors in everyday organizing efforts. In the first place, metaphors do not only aid organizing, but also hamper it, as shown on the example of introduction of a rapid tram in the center of Rome. This mundane process of a traffic innovation has been flooded in metaphors by the massmedia who, however, were all along helped by the organizational actors. The result was an undue dramatization of the event, which made the operation of the tram unnecessarily problematic. The second point is, that such tendency to "metaphor abuse" and dramatization is a part of the cultural context of organizing, as illustrated by contrasting the way in which similar event in Stockholm was portrayed by the Swedish media. Italian rhetorical tradition contrasts visibly with the Scandinavian tendency to pragmatism and understatement. The case reported in the paper and its readings are meant to explore further ways of applying insights of language and literature theory to further understanding of the increasing complexity of organizing processes
Negotiating Selves: Gender
(2006) Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
This paper suggests a way of framing gender production in workplaces as a negotiation with varying results. The basis for such a frame is a combination of the notions of ”positioning” (the discoursive production of selves, as suggested by Davies and Harré, 1990), ”doing gender” (gender as an accomplishment, an achieved property of situated conduct: West and Zimmerman, 1987), ”negotiation of identities” (which take place when positioning is contested: Pavlenko and Blackledge, 2004) and ”coercive gendering” (ascribing gender to people through discriminatory action: Czarniawska, 2006). One could then distinguish a self-positioning from an attributive positioning and observe their interplay. Using examples from the field, the paper then reviews varying outcomes of such negotiations in workplaces. Although the examples start with gender, the same frame can be successively applied to various instances of intersectionality.
On meshworks and other complications of portraying contemporary organizing
(Gothenburg Research Institute, 2013-10) Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
This text begins with a brief summary of problems resulting from the traditional framing of the term “organizations”. It ignores organizing without organizations, organizing between organizations, and the fact that organizations can be obstacles to organizing. The text continues with the analysis of the newly fashionable term “meshwork” as a possible new way of framing organizing.
On Time, Space, and Action Nets
(2004) Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
Laboratory studies, especially those by Latour and Woolgar (1979/1986) and Knorr Cetina (1981) proved to be an invaluable source of inspiration for students of organizing. Laboratories, however, are mostly reminiscent of simple factories, an organization form that is no longer central in today’s world of work organizations. Two aspects of factory-like organizing are problematized in this paper: the dominance of chronological time and the existence of centers of calculation. Complementing these with kairotic time and dispersed calculation will bring the two kinds of studies even closer. Such a rapprochement will allow for adjusting the methodological approaches in studies of organization in a way similar to that dominant in SST (studies of science and technology) research. Two such changes are suggested: the reversal of the time perspective (action nets instead of organizations as study objects) and mobile ethnologies, facilitating study of the ways of life and work of people who move around a great deal.
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(Kommunforskning i Västsverige, 1997) Czarniawska, Barbara
Richard Rorty: Our guide to a pragmatist organization theory
(2022) Czarniawska, Barbara
Robotization - Then and Now
(Gothenburg Research Institute, 2018-04-20) Czarniawska, Barbara; Joerges, Bernward; Gothenburg Research Institute
Karel Čapek, the Czech author, coined the term “robot” (from “robota”, labor in Slavic languages; “robotnik” means “worker”) in 1920. In his play, R.U.R. - Rossum Universal Robots, artificial humans made of synthetic organic materials were produced and worked in factories and developed lives not very different from those of the people. R.U.R. became a science fiction classic between the wars, and its topics were taken up with great enthusiasm in the 1950s and 1960s. The Cold War found its expression in space competition, among others. Cybernetics and cyborgs seemed to be an inescapable future, initially in space travel, but then in other kinds of industrial production. Already in 1942 Isaac Asimov had formulated his Three Laws of Robotics, meant to constrain humanoid machines to their subordinate place with relation to humans. It was fiction, but has been taken very seriously by AI researchers and others ever since. When the Iron Curtain fell, space travel lost its attractions, but robots entered production processes in many industries. The end of the 1970s had seen the latest of recurring debates about automation, technological unemployment and deskilling, triggered by Braverman’s book (1974), but it had faded out in the 1980s. Now the debate is back. “Robots could take half of the jobs in Germany” is a typical newspaper’s title nowadays. Serious authors write either enthusiastic or dystopic books about robotization (John Searle has recently critically reviewed two from 2014, Floridi’s enthusiastic The Fourth Revolution and Bostrom’s dystopic Superintelligence, protesting that computers will never develop a consciousness). Apparently, we are witnessing a “robot revolution” – or so such serious sources as BofA Merill Lynch investigators claim. In what follows, we first analyze the fears and hopes automation has occasioned, as reflected in popular culture from the coining of the term “robot” to the present media hype. Have such hopes and fears changed, and did the changes reflect actual changes in robotics, or do they remain the same?
Strong plots: The relationship between Popular Culture and Management Practice & Theory
(2004) Rhodes, Carl; Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
In this paper we consider the relationship between popular culture and management practice. Starting with references to previously established connections between high culture and management, we turn to popular culture for the same kind of connection. We suggest that much popular culture is based on established and repeated patterns of emplotment, and we go on to examine how it might teach practices and provide models for how practice is understood. The "strong plots", we claim, provide possible blueprints for the management of meaning in organizations. We illustrate our ideas with three types of text. The first is an ethnographic study of an organization in decline. Here we show how management practice that attempted to work outside of the heroic emplotment of management action was resisted in the organization. The second example concerns two popular novels about the financial services industry. We point out that these novels perpetuate particular strong plots in relation to gendered practices in financial services. Thirdly, we turn to two examples of the parody of working life in comic strips and animated cartoons. In this case we demonstrate that popular culture can also be a site for the critique of, and resistance to, strong plots. In conclusion we suggest a role for management research consisting in questioning strong plots in both culture and management practice through avant-garde practices of experimentation and creation.
Svenska företag i deckarromaner 1943-2001
(2003) Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
Fiction offers many interesting insights to students of management. In the first place, many novels contain elements of historical ethnographies, portraying the ways of life – and organizing – that vanished in the past. Second, the contemporary novel is a part of a contemporary discourse, and therefore one of the media that reflects and shapes the general image of economic enterprise and its management. Detective novels are especially interesting as they are characterized by special care in describing practices in a trustworthy detail (rather than a psychological veracity). This essay analyzes the changes in description of Swedish companies in Swedish detective novels. It begins with the first famous Swedish detective story writer, Stieg Trenter and his works, and continues until the present time. It ends with a plea for a close scrutiny of ties between popular culture and management
The (d)evolution of the cyberwoman?
(2006) Gustavsson, Eva; Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
In this text, we examine Donna Haraway’s idea of a liberating potential of cyborgization first in the subsequent versions of Stepford Wives (the novel, the 1975 movie, and the 2004 movie), and second in the evolution of the character of a cyberwoman, from the book, Do androids dream electric sheep? (1977), through its film version, Blade Runner (1983), to William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Idoru (1996), ending with Trinity from Matrix trilogy. We show that cyborgization does not automatically denote liberalization; and suggest that the much greater popularity of Matrix films compared to the intellectual projects of William Gibson show that stereotypes and strong plots survive, finding ever new forms of expression. We end the paper pointing out the relevance of popular culture models for work in contemporary homes and other workplaces.
The Thin End of the Wedge. Foreign Women Professors as Double Strangers in Academia
(2005) Sevón, Guje; Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
The impetus for this study was an observation that many of the women who obtained the first chairs at European universities were foreigners. Our initial attempt to provide a statistical picture proved impossible, because there were numerous problems deciding the contents of such concepts as "first", "university professor", and "foreigner". We have therefore focused on four life stories. It turns out that being a "double stranger" – a woman in a masculine profession and a foreigner – is not, as one might think, a cumulative disadvantage. Rather, it seems that these two types of strangeness might cancel one another, permitting these women a greater degree of success than was allowed their "native" sisters. This situation was far from providing psychological comfort, however. Thus the metaphor of the wedge: opening the doors but suffering from double pressure.
THE USES OF NARRATIVE IN ORGANIZATION RESEARCH
(2000) Czarniawska, Barbara; Gothenburg Research Institute
A so-called literary turn in social sciences in general and in organization studies in particular has resulted in re-discovering the narrative knowledge in organization theory and practice. Organization researchers watching the stories being made and distributed collect organizational stories and provoke story telling in their contacts with the field of practice. This paper takes up the variety of ways of reading such narratives, classifying them into the three steps delineated in the hermeneutic triad: explication, explanation, and exploration. Explication raises the issues of interpretation and overinterpretation; and finds different solutions in pragmatist vs. traditional hermeneutic theory of interpretation. Explanation has a wide range of techniques and approaches to offer, from structuralism through poststructuralism to deconstruction. Narratology is of help also in the last stage, exploration, offering reflection concerning the construction of the researcher's own story by genre analysis etc. The paper ends in a review of most common attitudes towards text analysis: text as the key to the world, text-as-world, texts in the world (science as conversation).
Web Woman: The On-line Construction of Corporate and Gender Images
(2004) Czarniawska, Barbara; Gustavsson, Eva; Gothenburg Research Institute
One of the many interesting applications of information technology is 'business on the net' and, within this trend, the appearance of virtual females whose job it is to assist customers by giving advice and delivering information. These creatures raise a host of interesting questions about corporate image, but also about humanness and femininity. Who or what do they represent: the companies that produced them? their designers? society's dreams - both open and forbidden? Although we cannot aspire to provide final answers to these questions, we do try to formulate the questions in this paper and frame them in contexts that seem to be promising.