SCOS Update December
A great edition of the SCOS update, with four fabulous items, including:
1) The latest on the 2014 SCOS Conference: In July 2014 we are delighted to be heading to Utrecht for what promises to be a fantastic conference, full of great papers – and lots of sports, play, and game! All details can be found on the SCOS website, and in the CFP, included here as item 1.
2) A CFP for 7th Art of Management Conference: CBS: Creativity and Design - stream: The Disruptive Potential of Arts Based Approaches
3) A joint CFP/ Workshop Proposals for Creative Economy, Creative University and Creative Development, Ideas, Knowledges and Paths towards Sustainability, Happiness & Wellbeing, 3rd Creative University Conference
4) A CFP for The 9th Annual Liverpool Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences in association with the Journal of Organizational Ethnography - Ethnography and liminality: boundaries, opportunities and living ‘at the edge’
1) The latest on the 2014 SCOS Conference: In July 2014 we are delighted to be heading to Utrecht for what promises to be a fantastic conference, full of great papers – and lots of sports, play, and game! All details can be found on the SCOS website, and in the CFP, included here as item 1.
2) A CFP for 7th Art of Management Conference: CBS: Creativity and Design - stream: The Disruptive Potential of Arts Based Approaches
3) A joint CFP/ Workshop Proposals for Creative Economy, Creative University and Creative Development, Ideas, Knowledges and Paths towards Sustainability, Happiness & Wellbeing, 3rd Creative University Conference
4) A CFP for The 9th Annual Liverpool Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences in association with the Journal of Organizational Ethnography - Ethnography and liminality: boundaries, opportunities and living ‘at the edge’
Item 1:
32nd Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism (SCOS) – ‘Sport, Play and Game’
Utrecht, the Netherlands, 7-10 July 2014, School of Governance, Utrecht University
Organizing committee: Jeroen Vermeulen, Martijn Koster, Michel van Slobbe, Eugène Loos, Jeroen Veldman
Call for Papers
“All play means something” (Johan Huizinga, 1938)
In recent decades, sport as a social practice has become relevant in many different spheres: in health, economy, politics, education, work and leisure. The importance of sport transcends beyond the confines of the sport field. Sport is, in essence, is about organization and organizing.
SCOS 2014 focuses on the symbolic and cultural meanings of sport from the perspective of the tension between play and game. Play refers to the free, the associative, the spontaneous and to (re)creative aspects. Game refers to the serious, the regulated and the competitive aspects. Hence, the conference theme Sport, play and games concentrates on the interplay between the formal and the entertaining; between the serious and the fun. It does so by focusing in on the intricate connections and tensions between work and leisure; system world and life world; rules and creativity; standardization and innovation; the categorical and the personal; the centres of hegemonic power and the margins of everyday organizational life. Because of these tensions and contradictions, the theme of Sport, play and game provides vantage points for exploring beyond taken-for-granted assumptions of social life in organizations.
The conference is concerned with the question how sport is organized both as an active, participative, and a passive, consumed, form of engagement. In both senses, it is interesting to consider how sport functions as a spectacle, as performance and as an aspect of community. In line with this, issues of play and playfulness and of games and gaming in organizations come to the fore.
Furthermore, sport features particularities that resonate with organizational life.
Organizations are replete with sporting metaphors that give meaning to their practices, such as competition, arena, excellence, talent, team work. We might also think about games like chess as a metaphor for organizing and strategy. Meanwhile, in sport, we find organizational aspects of regulation and control. In this way, the interweaving of sport and organization opens up possibilities for management.
The organization of events such as the Olympic Games, the World Cup Football and the Tour de France has an immense economic, social and political impact. Sport is entangled with issues of bribery and corruption, regulation and politics, and with the role of the State. As such, sport is a nexus between serious fun and serious business.
We would like to invite contributions that – particularly but not exclusively – deal with the following subjects in organization studies, from the perspective of sport, play and game:
• Playful organizations - playing on the job, playtime as an organization, play and design, play as resistance, child's play, homo ludens in organizations, cultures of fun
• Social values of teamwork, loyalty, and self-sacrifice
• Body culture - the cultivation of bodily exercise, body dysmorphia and play,
The Adonis Complex, plastic surgery, muscles
• Physical culture – cultural expressions of community through physical activities (forms of sports, dances, folk games, martial arts)
• Rules and regulations - corporate cheats and phonies, blaggers and chancers, spoil-sports, breaking the rules, obedience and compliance
• Collective participation - collaboration, cooperation, synchronization of actions, new games with no winners only players, on-line gaming
• Pleasure and entertainment - the pleasure principle, the misery of the school gym and the dreaded PE lesson, Epicureanism, the spectacle, sport and play in movies
• Identities - the David Beckham effect or the glamour of the international sports person – sport as marker and maker of cultural identities, sporting heartthrobs
• Politics and policy – sport and nationalism, sport for development, instrumental uses of sport
• Competition – the ‘excellence’ game in organizations, high performance
• Field - playing the field, fielding questions, the spatial and symbolic boundaries of the sport field
• Morality and ethics - fair play, whistle blowing, sportsmanship as a moral category, honesty and responsibility
• Feelings and emotions – sweat and tears, euphoria, auto-ethnographies of horrible wet hockey fields
• Producing and consuming - audiences, media, merchandising
• Games and gaming - exergaming, social games, gaming cultures, online games, casual games, games in business, gamification
• Gender – construction of gender roles through play and sport, and gender play, inequalities
• Sport and economy – commercialization of sport, football clubs as capitalized businesses, branding, logos
• Work and leisure – new divisions in time and space, free time, sport events during work time
• In- and exclusion – who can play along, secret societies, hidden worlds, illegal sport, extreme ironing, amateurs versus professionals
• Insiders and outsiders – fan culture, us versus them, opposing teams, teammates, home and away games, boundaries (lines) of the field
• Violence – physical abuse against referees and linesmen, football is war, injuries, extreme fighting sports, organization as an arena for symbolic violence
• Winning and losing - competitiveness, rivalry, tactics, scoring, goals and targets
• Place and space – sensing the stadium: when the lights go up and the lads come out in their colours, the arena, the gym, sport program in jails, struggle over space, space as a practised place, the playground
• Material artefacts – the ball, the field, clothes, sportswear as ordinary wear, protective clothing, the whistle, toys
• Sport and philosophy – why sport?
Please note, that the themes are not limited to those included in the list above! As always, alternative and innovative interpretations of the theme are encouraged. With its long tradition of interdisciplinary membership, SCOS invites papers that draw insights and approaches from across a range of social sciences and humanities. In addition to scholars working in management and organization studies we welcome contributions from anthropology, sociology, philosophy, politics, (art) history, sport studies, communication, film, gender and cultural studies. Contributions can be theoretical, empirical or methodological, but should address their subject matter in a critical and rigorous fashion.
Open stream
An open stream will facilitate presentations of recent developments in research on organizational culture and symbolism that do not connect directly to the conference theme. Papers are therefore invited on any aspect of theory, methodology, fieldwork or practice that may be of interest to the SCOS community. If submitting to the open stream, please indicate this clearly on your abstract.
Workshops
We also welcome suggestions for workshops, performances or events. Outlines of proposed workshops should be no more than 500 words and should clearly indicate the resources needed, the number of participants, the time required, the approach to be taken and the session’s objectives.
Abstracts
Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted as e-mail attachments (all common formats accepted) by 1st February 2014 to the organizers: scos2014@gmail.com
Item 2:
7th Art of Management Conference: CBS – Creativity and Design: The Disruptive Potential of Arts Based Approaches
Stream leaders: Louise Grisoni (lgrisoni@oxford brookes.ac.uk) ) and Margaret Page (margaret.page@uwe.ac.uk)
Call for Papers
Recent trends in organization literature point to a search for new and innovative modes of inquiry that question “assumed certainties” (Dey and Steyaert, 2007: 443). There is recognition of the need to find new ways to address the demand for flexible responses, innovation and knowledge creation in times of unpredictability and instability, and we have seen calls to the organizational and management studies community to take inspiration from the arts (Adler 2006). Adler claims new ways of seeing are necessary to be able to understand the actual ‘realities’ of the world we live in, and not to mistake that for seeing things as they are labelled.
Arts-based methods have been recognised for exploring, examining and eliciting the less obvious, the unaccountable, the so-called non-rational elements of organizational experience, countering the more traditional business and management tools of logic and rationality. Arguing that such methods offer a fundamentally different way of approaching the world Taylor and Ladkin (2009) suggest that arts based methods enable us to access and develop different ways of sensuous knowing which can “contribute to a more holistic way of engaging with managerial contexts” (2009: 56). The arts access the range of human emotion and make a more holistic contribution to our understanding; giving voice to those unheard via traditional mechanisms; enabling access to tacit knowledge (Tsoukas 2002) and communication of the ‘unthought known’ (Bollas 1987); creating contexts in which we are faced with ambiguity and uncertainty; and offering transformative, imaginative ways of approaching, analysing and reflecting on old problems.
We are interested in developing a theorisation of the disruptive potential arts based approaches bring to examining and exploring organisational phenomena, shaping new understandings. Contributions are invited from scholars and practitioners that may shed light on the notion of disruption from a wide range of perspectives. There are many possibilities in relation to how we think of disruption with all its destructive and generative potential for organising and sensemaking. Disruption can be thought of as an act of delaying, dislocating or interrupting continuity, creating a lacuna – a disrupted and liminal space where shifts in thinking, sensemaking and practice can occur, pauses held and surprising inserts made. A process orientation to the study of organizational phenomena treats them not as faits accomplis but as (re)created through interacting agents embedded in discursive practices. Becoming, change, flux as well as creativity, disruption, and indeterminism are the main themes of a process worldview which invites us to acknowledge, rather than reduce, the complexity of the world focusing on procedures that subvert the taken-for-granted realities (Chia, 1996).
Disruption is generally seen as disturbance of some kind linked to disorder, turmoil and upheaval. Can a state of commotion and noise and confusion created by arts based inquiry lead to positive outcomes for individuals and organisations? Lyotard (1988, p. xi) suggests the point of some design is to disrupt existing rules and sensemaking radically, to create radical discontinuity in the grammar of design, thus creating ‘‘the shock of the new’’ (Hughes, 2011).
We are interested in responses to these ideas and contributions may include, but should not be limited to:
Arts based methods: another management tool?
Using arts based approaches in transforming individuals, transforming/redesigning organisations.
Art based inquiry as organisational therapy
Arts based inquiry within the business school: a strategy for student learning?
Using arts based approaches to examine:
ambiguity and uncertainty,
The disruptive nature of emotional engagement,
The use of irony and parody,
Etc, etc….
Please send abstracts or a description of your proposed contribution/performance to lgrisoni@brookes.ac.uk and m.page@uwe.ac.uk
The deadline for submission has been extended and is now January 28, 2014.
References
Adler, N. J. (2006). The Arts & Leadership: Now That We Can Do Anything, What Will We Do? Academy of Management Learning & Education 5; Vol. (4), pp.486-499.
Bollas, C. (1987). The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Unknown. . Free Association Books
Chia, R. (1996). Metaphors and Metaphorization in Organizational Analysis: Thinking beyond the Thinkable. In: Grant, D. and Oswick, C. (eds.) Metaphor and Organizations. London: Sage.
Dey, P. and Steyaert, C. (2007). The Troubadours of Knowledge: Passion and Invention in Management Education. Organization 14 (3), pp.437-461.
Hamel, G. (2000). Leading the revolution. . Boston, MA: Harvard, Business School Press.
Hughes, S. (2011). The Leadership Mask: a personally focused art based learning enquiry into facets of leadership. Reflective Practice 12 (3), pp.305-317(313).
Taylor, S. S. and Ladkin, D. (2009). Understanding Arts-Based Methods in Managerial Development. Academy of Management Learning & Education 8; Vol. (1), pp.55-69.
Tsoukas, H. (2002). Introduction. Management Learning 33; Vol. (4), pp.419-426.
Item 3:
Joint Call For Papers / Call For Workshops Proposals, 3rd Creative University Conference
Creative Economy, Creative University and Creative Development
Ideas, Knowledges and Paths towards Sustainability, Happiness & Wellbeing
An International Conference organized by the Institute for GNH Studies (iGNHaS, Royal University of Bhutan), International Creative University Network (ICUN), Center for Global Studies in Education (CGSE, Waikato University, New Zealand), and Future Education, Groups & Organization Studies (FUEGOS, University of Marburg, Germany), and supported by the Commission of Organizational Education of the German Educational Research Association (GERA–OE)
Royal University of Bhutan Convention Centre, Thimphu, 14 - 16 April 2014
Call for papers/workshops
In our dynamic, accelerating societies, innovation and creativity are on the agenda of economical, political and social actors. According to specific rationalities, global, national, institutional and professional discourses on future, innovation and creativity differ greatly. In this polyphonic structure, some voices are heard more than others and some paradigms have become dominant: especially the market and economic growth paradigm even at present seems to be unquestionable. In an obviously more and more challenged world, the global polyphonic scenery now has the potential to open up towards new ideas and visions. The role of public universities being under debate and the public mission of the university being reframed: How will universities interpret the present trends? According to dominant discourses, the university should become an economically shaped institution to advance and promote the production of market knowledge. Will universities react – or respond to this market-pressure? And how will universities contribute to develop our common future?
Nowadays, many academics and intellectuals intend to create and open up old and new spaces for critical reflection, for new ideas, visions for the future and alternative developmental paths. Reflecting on the idea and potential, mission and responsibility of the university helps to open up and foster spaces for a critical and transformative institution that shifts academic self-concepts from (dis-)interested scholarship towards the promotion of global citizenship. So what is the potential of universities, to contribute to a sustainable development and to strategies of happiness and wellbeing?
An alternative development agenda addresses the interconnectedness of economical and social development to academic knowledge creation and as well to higher education. Knowledge for development, “development education” and “education for sustainable development” approaches show that education has become central to development and community development. Democratic participation of all groups (especially women) in the developmental process is understood as foundational. What are the paradigms of development education that suggest new possibilities and spaces for “development” that take advantage of emerging world trends, critical knowledge development paths and the role of education in these processes?
At a local and global level, new communications- and information-technologies open up towards the emerging paradigm of development education. Global knowledge development brings about an open global society as well as the development of trust-relationships within learning societies. “Open knowledge” and “open knowledge production” and related models like “peer production” and “peer governance” provide emerging alternatives to traditional proprietary models of knowledge production. The agenda of non-rivalry, coproduction and collaboration defines new developmental trajectories, where sustainability, happiness and wellbeing become relevant at the level of individuals, communities, institutions and societies.
The 3rd Creative Universities Conference is being held in the Royal University of Bhutan, which has promoted the concept of happiness and wellbeing as an alternative developmental paradigm. Organized jointly by the International Creative Universities Network (ICUN), the Global Studies program of Waikato University, New Zealand and the Future Education, Groups and Organization Studies (FUEGOS) Center Initiative at Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany, the conference aims to open up an international “polylogue” on the role and potentials of a Creative University, effectively advancing the notions and potentials of creative development.
The conference offers spaces for different kinds of papers and workshops. In order to connect theoretical reflections with creation, the practices of the conference combine different ways and formats of learning. Traditional (theoretical, methodological, empirical or conceptual) papers will be presented in assigned fora and connected to developmental workshops. Like this, the bridging of different ways of thinking, the emergence of thought out of practice will be supported. In order to explore integrated ways of learning, in workshop sessions, body and artistic interventions will be especially welcome. Combined with traditional academic approaches, the conference will enable the participants to engage in a transformative learning process through dialogue, introspection and self reflection. This leads to a deepening of understanding of how the creative university intersects its functioning with what the new development paradigm should look like. Also, the notion of co-creating and of enabling to prototype change as social practice is a principle to be followed here.
Forum 1 (1st day): Creativity and the educational mode of development
Exploring the Agenda of Creative University and Creative Development leads to reflections on the educational mode of development. What are different notions of the educational mode of development? What role can universities play in developing a new agenda of institutional creativity? Which actors and groups of actors (do & can) initiate transitions towards integrated developmental strategies? Which role do diversity, heterogeneity and inequality of actors play and how can this be researched as well as addressed in institutional strategies? What are different notions and concepts in order to foster equality and wellbeing? How is the relationship between creative economy, creative university and creative development shaped in discourses of the presence, how can it be analyzed?
Workshop 1 (2nd day): Creating Developmental Spaces and supporting Actors of Change
How do we create developmental spaces in our universities, societies, economies and cross sector innovation strategies? How can actors in creative universities and institutions in society and economy be supported to create happiness and wellbeing? How can students, staff, faculty, leadership, management, community become involved? How can we develop positive relationships and functional structures for our vision of the university and its relationship to society, communities and economy? How can transitory spaces, think spaces and creativity labs arise and be fostered by educational institutions, economical actors, organizations and initiatives in society?
Forum 2 (1st day): Creative University: Strategies of Creation and Creative Development of the Future
Which patterns and grammars of awareness are the basis for the practice of organizational change towards an integrated development perspective? How do organizational awareness cultures contribute to the support, negotiation, dilution or prevention of creativity? Which notion of the “idea of university” brings about real change? How can creative development and possibilities for change be supported and how can the interaction and contradictions between bureaucratic, market-oriented and communal organizational cultures be opened by awareness rising and mindfulness? What can other partnering institutions contribute – in an overarching cross sector innovation perspective?
Workshop 2 (2nd day): Developing and Discovering Mindfulness approaches to teaching, learning and development
How can spaces of awareness, mindfulness and creative approaches in organizations emerge and be implemented? What are strategies of creation and practices belonging to a true mindfulness approach? How can a network culture of future orientation, of mindfulness and sustainability be created and how can it contribute regularly to positive dynamics of institutional change? Which kinds of ideas of university, of economy and society are brought about by a different practice? How does mindfulness integrate and fit together with other learning intentions? Which kinds of developmental paths can be created here? What are the knowledges and paths to happiness and wellbeing?
Forum 3 (1rst day): Methodology and Methods of (action-) research
What is the best way to theoretically and empirically reconstruct organizational, institutional and network rules of creating creative organizing? Which methodological strategies and methods are best suited to empirically analyze the emergence and implementation of open and creative futures in organizations? How are new and established methods combined in exploring the complex and multilevel phenomenon of creativity and future orientation in organisations, economy and society? What is the potential of innovative research designs? What is the benefit of multi-methods and triangulation approaches? How can action-research contribute to address both research and change? What is the implications and possibilities for organizational transformation in society and economy - and academic knowledge creation?
Workshop 3 (2nd day): Using Action-(Research) for the transformation of society
How can we inspire change agents, actors and communities to develop in a mindful way? How can we use a methodology of action research focusing on the notion of action? How to use culturally adequate methods, which inspire articulation and envisioning desired futures? What is methodology and methods of creative action research and organizing in our societies, economy and university? What are new potentials for action research approaches in an interdisciplinary and international perspective? Which knowledges and paths can be created by open developmental strategies of innovation?
Forum 4 (1rst day): Creativity, Open Science & Travelling Ideas
Exploring the question of creative economy, creative university and creative development is related to the debates on open science and to making ideas travel. This forum provides space for the discussion of the dimensions of the New, related to open science and the role of “creative university” for a creative economy and creative development. What are different patterns and options of generating creative futures and awareness in organizing? What is the nature of open science and open education – and how can international program development contribute to the creation of a global structure and global flows of “travelling ideas” and “travelling universities”? What are the paths into a sustainable future and the paths of sustainability oriented university programs?
Workshop 4 (2nd day): Ideas and practices of partnerships, co-operations and the development of academic programs
What are ideas and practices, which contribute to a cross sector innovation approach and to an outreach of university to community learning, volunteerism and nation building as well as cosmopolitism? How does the creative university develop relationships outside academia – to community, government and industry? What are risks and possibilities of public private co-operations, partnering and innovating across sectors? What are technological requirements to realize international and global cooperation? How can decentralized and multi-campus settings be made fruitful in a global world? How can peer to peer technologies contribute to develop global education approaches? What can universities contribute to the educational mode of development?
Fora and Workshop Sessions
We’d like to invite you to hand in your abstracts and suggestions for a conference paper for one of the fora or a workshop proposal for one of the workshops (1000-1500 characters). The abstract should demonstrate the paper’s/workshop proposal’s relation to the above mentioned thematic areas as well as the theoretical, methodological, empirical or conceptual background of the paper or workshop. Please let us know in which forum or workshop you would like to present your paper or design-activity. All abstracts and workshop proposals will be peer reviewed and assigned to one of the fora or workshops. After the conference, a peer reviewed book in English with conference proceedings and workshop results will be published.
Submission of abstract/workshop proposal
Please send your abstract and/or proposal for a workshop session until November 30th, 2013 to
Ms Tshering Choden: tsheringchoden.ovc@rub.edu.bt
Item 4:
The 9th Annual Liverpool Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences in association with the Journal of Organizational Ethnography
Ethnography and liminality: boundaries, opportunities and living ‘at the edge’
Hosted at the University Campus Suffolk, Ipswich, 27th - 29th August, 2014
Call for Papers
The Annual Liverpool Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences is a leading international forum for debate and dialogue on the theory, practice and form of ethnographic work. Having travelled to Amsterdam last year, we return to the UK and to an emerging centre for Higher Education. The 9th Symposium will be hosted by Professor David Weir and colleagues at the new University Campus Suffolk. Ethnography is at the heart of the educational and research philosophy of UCS. Located on the historic waterfront in Ipswich, the symposium offers an opportunity to think about ethnographic art and practice at the edges, or ‘the limit’.
We therefore dedicate this year’s symposium to the idea and different manifestations of the ‘threshold’ (or limen, in Latin). The concept of liminality has a long history in anthropology and was first described by Van Gennep (1908) in his structural study of the rites of passage and then further explained by Turner (1967) as a particular time and place where thought and behaviours as well as values and social action are questioned whilst the structure of society or culture one belongs to is ‘suspended’. This resonates with ethnographers often finding they are treading into the unknown, the little observed worlds that occupy the fringes of cities, of groups and societies, and of awareness. Living both familiarity and strangeness, as ethnographers we often experience what it means and feels to walk a space ‘in between’. We find ourselves in dangerous places, in uncomfortable situations, and in unknown terrains. Liminal situations may therefore involve uncertainty, ambiguity, doubts, and fear. Yet, in Turner’s view, they may also initiate renewal and change.
Contributions might thus reflect upon the main theme in relation to our experience as ethnographers, the others who we study, and the emerging situation. They might focus on the anthropological home of the methods we use in entering the unknown; how we grasp its possibilities and cope with its limitations. Or they might tell us about the period and historical context in which specific practices and experiences arise and may be ‘undone’. The 9th Symposium will bring together keynote speakers, each familiar with worlds at the margins. Judith Okely studied Gypsies/Travellers, Gerald Mars focused on workplace crime, Geoff Pearson uncovers football crowds and their policing, and Trudy Rudge explores the difficult world of nursing. Each ventures into unfamiliar terrains. Each reveals worlds unknown to most of us. All, in the tradition of ethnography, use their own bodies and their person as their research instrument, exposing themselves to the raw realities, difficult demands and emotional risks of their chosen fields.
We particularly welcome papers examining practices and experiences of ethnographers, individuals, groups, organisations and societies when dealing with ‘threshold experiences’ such as during the construction and dissolution of boundaries, the demarcating of identities and territories, the developing of opportunity, the acceptance and rejection of loss and gain, the resistance to change, the development of new visions and possibilities, the ‘testing of waters’ and experimentation needed at personal and professional junctures in ethnographic projects. In keeping with past Symposia, the theme of the 9th Symposium is deliberately broad, inviting contributions from researchers in a variety of fields.
Conference Organisers
Professor David Weir
d.weir@ucs.ac.uk
Dr Manuela Nocker
mnocker@essex.ac.uk
Dr Mike Rowe
mikerowe@liv.ac.uk
Organising Committee
Dr Matthew Brannan, Keele University
Dr Ruth Strudwick, University Campus Suffolk
Keynote Speakers
Professor Gerald Mars, University Campus Suffolk
Professor Judith Okely, Oxford University
Dr Geoff Pearson, University of Liverpool
Professor Trudy Rudge, University of Sydney
Submission Details
Abstracts (up to 750-words), should be submitted to ethnog@liverpool.ac.uk in PDF format, saved as the authors surname followed by the paper title by Friday 7th February 2014.
Decisions on acceptance of papers, subject to external refereeing, will be given by email by the 28th of February, 2014.
We ask that delegates submit full papers prior to the conference no later than Friday 25th July 2014.
For full details, please see: www.liv.ac.uk/ethnography
32nd Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism (SCOS) – ‘Sport, Play and Game’
Utrecht, the Netherlands, 7-10 July 2014, School of Governance, Utrecht University
Organizing committee: Jeroen Vermeulen, Martijn Koster, Michel van Slobbe, Eugène Loos, Jeroen Veldman
Call for Papers
“All play means something” (Johan Huizinga, 1938)
In recent decades, sport as a social practice has become relevant in many different spheres: in health, economy, politics, education, work and leisure. The importance of sport transcends beyond the confines of the sport field. Sport is, in essence, is about organization and organizing.
SCOS 2014 focuses on the symbolic and cultural meanings of sport from the perspective of the tension between play and game. Play refers to the free, the associative, the spontaneous and to (re)creative aspects. Game refers to the serious, the regulated and the competitive aspects. Hence, the conference theme Sport, play and games concentrates on the interplay between the formal and the entertaining; between the serious and the fun. It does so by focusing in on the intricate connections and tensions between work and leisure; system world and life world; rules and creativity; standardization and innovation; the categorical and the personal; the centres of hegemonic power and the margins of everyday organizational life. Because of these tensions and contradictions, the theme of Sport, play and game provides vantage points for exploring beyond taken-for-granted assumptions of social life in organizations.
The conference is concerned with the question how sport is organized both as an active, participative, and a passive, consumed, form of engagement. In both senses, it is interesting to consider how sport functions as a spectacle, as performance and as an aspect of community. In line with this, issues of play and playfulness and of games and gaming in organizations come to the fore.
Furthermore, sport features particularities that resonate with organizational life.
Organizations are replete with sporting metaphors that give meaning to their practices, such as competition, arena, excellence, talent, team work. We might also think about games like chess as a metaphor for organizing and strategy. Meanwhile, in sport, we find organizational aspects of regulation and control. In this way, the interweaving of sport and organization opens up possibilities for management.
The organization of events such as the Olympic Games, the World Cup Football and the Tour de France has an immense economic, social and political impact. Sport is entangled with issues of bribery and corruption, regulation and politics, and with the role of the State. As such, sport is a nexus between serious fun and serious business.
We would like to invite contributions that – particularly but not exclusively – deal with the following subjects in organization studies, from the perspective of sport, play and game:
• Playful organizations - playing on the job, playtime as an organization, play and design, play as resistance, child's play, homo ludens in organizations, cultures of fun
• Social values of teamwork, loyalty, and self-sacrifice
• Body culture - the cultivation of bodily exercise, body dysmorphia and play,
The Adonis Complex, plastic surgery, muscles
• Physical culture – cultural expressions of community through physical activities (forms of sports, dances, folk games, martial arts)
• Rules and regulations - corporate cheats and phonies, blaggers and chancers, spoil-sports, breaking the rules, obedience and compliance
• Collective participation - collaboration, cooperation, synchronization of actions, new games with no winners only players, on-line gaming
• Pleasure and entertainment - the pleasure principle, the misery of the school gym and the dreaded PE lesson, Epicureanism, the spectacle, sport and play in movies
• Identities - the David Beckham effect or the glamour of the international sports person – sport as marker and maker of cultural identities, sporting heartthrobs
• Politics and policy – sport and nationalism, sport for development, instrumental uses of sport
• Competition – the ‘excellence’ game in organizations, high performance
• Field - playing the field, fielding questions, the spatial and symbolic boundaries of the sport field
• Morality and ethics - fair play, whistle blowing, sportsmanship as a moral category, honesty and responsibility
• Feelings and emotions – sweat and tears, euphoria, auto-ethnographies of horrible wet hockey fields
• Producing and consuming - audiences, media, merchandising
• Games and gaming - exergaming, social games, gaming cultures, online games, casual games, games in business, gamification
• Gender – construction of gender roles through play and sport, and gender play, inequalities
• Sport and economy – commercialization of sport, football clubs as capitalized businesses, branding, logos
• Work and leisure – new divisions in time and space, free time, sport events during work time
• In- and exclusion – who can play along, secret societies, hidden worlds, illegal sport, extreme ironing, amateurs versus professionals
• Insiders and outsiders – fan culture, us versus them, opposing teams, teammates, home and away games, boundaries (lines) of the field
• Violence – physical abuse against referees and linesmen, football is war, injuries, extreme fighting sports, organization as an arena for symbolic violence
• Winning and losing - competitiveness, rivalry, tactics, scoring, goals and targets
• Place and space – sensing the stadium: when the lights go up and the lads come out in their colours, the arena, the gym, sport program in jails, struggle over space, space as a practised place, the playground
• Material artefacts – the ball, the field, clothes, sportswear as ordinary wear, protective clothing, the whistle, toys
• Sport and philosophy – why sport?
Please note, that the themes are not limited to those included in the list above! As always, alternative and innovative interpretations of the theme are encouraged. With its long tradition of interdisciplinary membership, SCOS invites papers that draw insights and approaches from across a range of social sciences and humanities. In addition to scholars working in management and organization studies we welcome contributions from anthropology, sociology, philosophy, politics, (art) history, sport studies, communication, film, gender and cultural studies. Contributions can be theoretical, empirical or methodological, but should address their subject matter in a critical and rigorous fashion.
Open stream
An open stream will facilitate presentations of recent developments in research on organizational culture and symbolism that do not connect directly to the conference theme. Papers are therefore invited on any aspect of theory, methodology, fieldwork or practice that may be of interest to the SCOS community. If submitting to the open stream, please indicate this clearly on your abstract.
Workshops
We also welcome suggestions for workshops, performances or events. Outlines of proposed workshops should be no more than 500 words and should clearly indicate the resources needed, the number of participants, the time required, the approach to be taken and the session’s objectives.
Abstracts
Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted as e-mail attachments (all common formats accepted) by 1st February 2014 to the organizers: scos2014@gmail.com
Item 2:
7th Art of Management Conference: CBS – Creativity and Design: The Disruptive Potential of Arts Based Approaches
Stream leaders: Louise Grisoni (lgrisoni@oxford brookes.ac.uk) ) and Margaret Page (margaret.page@uwe.ac.uk)
Call for Papers
Recent trends in organization literature point to a search for new and innovative modes of inquiry that question “assumed certainties” (Dey and Steyaert, 2007: 443). There is recognition of the need to find new ways to address the demand for flexible responses, innovation and knowledge creation in times of unpredictability and instability, and we have seen calls to the organizational and management studies community to take inspiration from the arts (Adler 2006). Adler claims new ways of seeing are necessary to be able to understand the actual ‘realities’ of the world we live in, and not to mistake that for seeing things as they are labelled.
Arts-based methods have been recognised for exploring, examining and eliciting the less obvious, the unaccountable, the so-called non-rational elements of organizational experience, countering the more traditional business and management tools of logic and rationality. Arguing that such methods offer a fundamentally different way of approaching the world Taylor and Ladkin (2009) suggest that arts based methods enable us to access and develop different ways of sensuous knowing which can “contribute to a more holistic way of engaging with managerial contexts” (2009: 56). The arts access the range of human emotion and make a more holistic contribution to our understanding; giving voice to those unheard via traditional mechanisms; enabling access to tacit knowledge (Tsoukas 2002) and communication of the ‘unthought known’ (Bollas 1987); creating contexts in which we are faced with ambiguity and uncertainty; and offering transformative, imaginative ways of approaching, analysing and reflecting on old problems.
We are interested in developing a theorisation of the disruptive potential arts based approaches bring to examining and exploring organisational phenomena, shaping new understandings. Contributions are invited from scholars and practitioners that may shed light on the notion of disruption from a wide range of perspectives. There are many possibilities in relation to how we think of disruption with all its destructive and generative potential for organising and sensemaking. Disruption can be thought of as an act of delaying, dislocating or interrupting continuity, creating a lacuna – a disrupted and liminal space where shifts in thinking, sensemaking and practice can occur, pauses held and surprising inserts made. A process orientation to the study of organizational phenomena treats them not as faits accomplis but as (re)created through interacting agents embedded in discursive practices. Becoming, change, flux as well as creativity, disruption, and indeterminism are the main themes of a process worldview which invites us to acknowledge, rather than reduce, the complexity of the world focusing on procedures that subvert the taken-for-granted realities (Chia, 1996).
Disruption is generally seen as disturbance of some kind linked to disorder, turmoil and upheaval. Can a state of commotion and noise and confusion created by arts based inquiry lead to positive outcomes for individuals and organisations? Lyotard (1988, p. xi) suggests the point of some design is to disrupt existing rules and sensemaking radically, to create radical discontinuity in the grammar of design, thus creating ‘‘the shock of the new’’ (Hughes, 2011).
We are interested in responses to these ideas and contributions may include, but should not be limited to:
Arts based methods: another management tool?
Using arts based approaches in transforming individuals, transforming/redesigning organisations.
Art based inquiry as organisational therapy
Arts based inquiry within the business school: a strategy for student learning?
Using arts based approaches to examine:
ambiguity and uncertainty,
The disruptive nature of emotional engagement,
The use of irony and parody,
Etc, etc….
Please send abstracts or a description of your proposed contribution/performance to lgrisoni@brookes.ac.uk and m.page@uwe.ac.uk
The deadline for submission has been extended and is now January 28, 2014.
References
Adler, N. J. (2006). The Arts & Leadership: Now That We Can Do Anything, What Will We Do? Academy of Management Learning & Education 5; Vol. (4), pp.486-499.
Bollas, C. (1987). The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Unknown. . Free Association Books
Chia, R. (1996). Metaphors and Metaphorization in Organizational Analysis: Thinking beyond the Thinkable. In: Grant, D. and Oswick, C. (eds.) Metaphor and Organizations. London: Sage.
Dey, P. and Steyaert, C. (2007). The Troubadours of Knowledge: Passion and Invention in Management Education. Organization 14 (3), pp.437-461.
Hamel, G. (2000). Leading the revolution. . Boston, MA: Harvard, Business School Press.
Hughes, S. (2011). The Leadership Mask: a personally focused art based learning enquiry into facets of leadership. Reflective Practice 12 (3), pp.305-317(313).
Taylor, S. S. and Ladkin, D. (2009). Understanding Arts-Based Methods in Managerial Development. Academy of Management Learning & Education 8; Vol. (1), pp.55-69.
Tsoukas, H. (2002). Introduction. Management Learning 33; Vol. (4), pp.419-426.
Item 3:
Joint Call For Papers / Call For Workshops Proposals, 3rd Creative University Conference
Creative Economy, Creative University and Creative Development
Ideas, Knowledges and Paths towards Sustainability, Happiness & Wellbeing
An International Conference organized by the Institute for GNH Studies (iGNHaS, Royal University of Bhutan), International Creative University Network (ICUN), Center for Global Studies in Education (CGSE, Waikato University, New Zealand), and Future Education, Groups & Organization Studies (FUEGOS, University of Marburg, Germany), and supported by the Commission of Organizational Education of the German Educational Research Association (GERA–OE)
Royal University of Bhutan Convention Centre, Thimphu, 14 - 16 April 2014
Call for papers/workshops
In our dynamic, accelerating societies, innovation and creativity are on the agenda of economical, political and social actors. According to specific rationalities, global, national, institutional and professional discourses on future, innovation and creativity differ greatly. In this polyphonic structure, some voices are heard more than others and some paradigms have become dominant: especially the market and economic growth paradigm even at present seems to be unquestionable. In an obviously more and more challenged world, the global polyphonic scenery now has the potential to open up towards new ideas and visions. The role of public universities being under debate and the public mission of the university being reframed: How will universities interpret the present trends? According to dominant discourses, the university should become an economically shaped institution to advance and promote the production of market knowledge. Will universities react – or respond to this market-pressure? And how will universities contribute to develop our common future?
Nowadays, many academics and intellectuals intend to create and open up old and new spaces for critical reflection, for new ideas, visions for the future and alternative developmental paths. Reflecting on the idea and potential, mission and responsibility of the university helps to open up and foster spaces for a critical and transformative institution that shifts academic self-concepts from (dis-)interested scholarship towards the promotion of global citizenship. So what is the potential of universities, to contribute to a sustainable development and to strategies of happiness and wellbeing?
An alternative development agenda addresses the interconnectedness of economical and social development to academic knowledge creation and as well to higher education. Knowledge for development, “development education” and “education for sustainable development” approaches show that education has become central to development and community development. Democratic participation of all groups (especially women) in the developmental process is understood as foundational. What are the paradigms of development education that suggest new possibilities and spaces for “development” that take advantage of emerging world trends, critical knowledge development paths and the role of education in these processes?
At a local and global level, new communications- and information-technologies open up towards the emerging paradigm of development education. Global knowledge development brings about an open global society as well as the development of trust-relationships within learning societies. “Open knowledge” and “open knowledge production” and related models like “peer production” and “peer governance” provide emerging alternatives to traditional proprietary models of knowledge production. The agenda of non-rivalry, coproduction and collaboration defines new developmental trajectories, where sustainability, happiness and wellbeing become relevant at the level of individuals, communities, institutions and societies.
The 3rd Creative Universities Conference is being held in the Royal University of Bhutan, which has promoted the concept of happiness and wellbeing as an alternative developmental paradigm. Organized jointly by the International Creative Universities Network (ICUN), the Global Studies program of Waikato University, New Zealand and the Future Education, Groups and Organization Studies (FUEGOS) Center Initiative at Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany, the conference aims to open up an international “polylogue” on the role and potentials of a Creative University, effectively advancing the notions and potentials of creative development.
The conference offers spaces for different kinds of papers and workshops. In order to connect theoretical reflections with creation, the practices of the conference combine different ways and formats of learning. Traditional (theoretical, methodological, empirical or conceptual) papers will be presented in assigned fora and connected to developmental workshops. Like this, the bridging of different ways of thinking, the emergence of thought out of practice will be supported. In order to explore integrated ways of learning, in workshop sessions, body and artistic interventions will be especially welcome. Combined with traditional academic approaches, the conference will enable the participants to engage in a transformative learning process through dialogue, introspection and self reflection. This leads to a deepening of understanding of how the creative university intersects its functioning with what the new development paradigm should look like. Also, the notion of co-creating and of enabling to prototype change as social practice is a principle to be followed here.
Forum 1 (1st day): Creativity and the educational mode of development
Exploring the Agenda of Creative University and Creative Development leads to reflections on the educational mode of development. What are different notions of the educational mode of development? What role can universities play in developing a new agenda of institutional creativity? Which actors and groups of actors (do & can) initiate transitions towards integrated developmental strategies? Which role do diversity, heterogeneity and inequality of actors play and how can this be researched as well as addressed in institutional strategies? What are different notions and concepts in order to foster equality and wellbeing? How is the relationship between creative economy, creative university and creative development shaped in discourses of the presence, how can it be analyzed?
Workshop 1 (2nd day): Creating Developmental Spaces and supporting Actors of Change
How do we create developmental spaces in our universities, societies, economies and cross sector innovation strategies? How can actors in creative universities and institutions in society and economy be supported to create happiness and wellbeing? How can students, staff, faculty, leadership, management, community become involved? How can we develop positive relationships and functional structures for our vision of the university and its relationship to society, communities and economy? How can transitory spaces, think spaces and creativity labs arise and be fostered by educational institutions, economical actors, organizations and initiatives in society?
Forum 2 (1st day): Creative University: Strategies of Creation and Creative Development of the Future
Which patterns and grammars of awareness are the basis for the practice of organizational change towards an integrated development perspective? How do organizational awareness cultures contribute to the support, negotiation, dilution or prevention of creativity? Which notion of the “idea of university” brings about real change? How can creative development and possibilities for change be supported and how can the interaction and contradictions between bureaucratic, market-oriented and communal organizational cultures be opened by awareness rising and mindfulness? What can other partnering institutions contribute – in an overarching cross sector innovation perspective?
Workshop 2 (2nd day): Developing and Discovering Mindfulness approaches to teaching, learning and development
How can spaces of awareness, mindfulness and creative approaches in organizations emerge and be implemented? What are strategies of creation and practices belonging to a true mindfulness approach? How can a network culture of future orientation, of mindfulness and sustainability be created and how can it contribute regularly to positive dynamics of institutional change? Which kinds of ideas of university, of economy and society are brought about by a different practice? How does mindfulness integrate and fit together with other learning intentions? Which kinds of developmental paths can be created here? What are the knowledges and paths to happiness and wellbeing?
Forum 3 (1rst day): Methodology and Methods of (action-) research
What is the best way to theoretically and empirically reconstruct organizational, institutional and network rules of creating creative organizing? Which methodological strategies and methods are best suited to empirically analyze the emergence and implementation of open and creative futures in organizations? How are new and established methods combined in exploring the complex and multilevel phenomenon of creativity and future orientation in organisations, economy and society? What is the potential of innovative research designs? What is the benefit of multi-methods and triangulation approaches? How can action-research contribute to address both research and change? What is the implications and possibilities for organizational transformation in society and economy - and academic knowledge creation?
Workshop 3 (2nd day): Using Action-(Research) for the transformation of society
How can we inspire change agents, actors and communities to develop in a mindful way? How can we use a methodology of action research focusing on the notion of action? How to use culturally adequate methods, which inspire articulation and envisioning desired futures? What is methodology and methods of creative action research and organizing in our societies, economy and university? What are new potentials for action research approaches in an interdisciplinary and international perspective? Which knowledges and paths can be created by open developmental strategies of innovation?
Forum 4 (1rst day): Creativity, Open Science & Travelling Ideas
Exploring the question of creative economy, creative university and creative development is related to the debates on open science and to making ideas travel. This forum provides space for the discussion of the dimensions of the New, related to open science and the role of “creative university” for a creative economy and creative development. What are different patterns and options of generating creative futures and awareness in organizing? What is the nature of open science and open education – and how can international program development contribute to the creation of a global structure and global flows of “travelling ideas” and “travelling universities”? What are the paths into a sustainable future and the paths of sustainability oriented university programs?
Workshop 4 (2nd day): Ideas and practices of partnerships, co-operations and the development of academic programs
What are ideas and practices, which contribute to a cross sector innovation approach and to an outreach of university to community learning, volunteerism and nation building as well as cosmopolitism? How does the creative university develop relationships outside academia – to community, government and industry? What are risks and possibilities of public private co-operations, partnering and innovating across sectors? What are technological requirements to realize international and global cooperation? How can decentralized and multi-campus settings be made fruitful in a global world? How can peer to peer technologies contribute to develop global education approaches? What can universities contribute to the educational mode of development?
Fora and Workshop Sessions
We’d like to invite you to hand in your abstracts and suggestions for a conference paper for one of the fora or a workshop proposal for one of the workshops (1000-1500 characters). The abstract should demonstrate the paper’s/workshop proposal’s relation to the above mentioned thematic areas as well as the theoretical, methodological, empirical or conceptual background of the paper or workshop. Please let us know in which forum or workshop you would like to present your paper or design-activity. All abstracts and workshop proposals will be peer reviewed and assigned to one of the fora or workshops. After the conference, a peer reviewed book in English with conference proceedings and workshop results will be published.
Submission of abstract/workshop proposal
Please send your abstract and/or proposal for a workshop session until November 30th, 2013 to
Ms Tshering Choden: tsheringchoden.ovc@rub.edu.bt
Item 4:
The 9th Annual Liverpool Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences in association with the Journal of Organizational Ethnography
Ethnography and liminality: boundaries, opportunities and living ‘at the edge’
Hosted at the University Campus Suffolk, Ipswich, 27th - 29th August, 2014
Call for Papers
The Annual Liverpool Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences is a leading international forum for debate and dialogue on the theory, practice and form of ethnographic work. Having travelled to Amsterdam last year, we return to the UK and to an emerging centre for Higher Education. The 9th Symposium will be hosted by Professor David Weir and colleagues at the new University Campus Suffolk. Ethnography is at the heart of the educational and research philosophy of UCS. Located on the historic waterfront in Ipswich, the symposium offers an opportunity to think about ethnographic art and practice at the edges, or ‘the limit’.
We therefore dedicate this year’s symposium to the idea and different manifestations of the ‘threshold’ (or limen, in Latin). The concept of liminality has a long history in anthropology and was first described by Van Gennep (1908) in his structural study of the rites of passage and then further explained by Turner (1967) as a particular time and place where thought and behaviours as well as values and social action are questioned whilst the structure of society or culture one belongs to is ‘suspended’. This resonates with ethnographers often finding they are treading into the unknown, the little observed worlds that occupy the fringes of cities, of groups and societies, and of awareness. Living both familiarity and strangeness, as ethnographers we often experience what it means and feels to walk a space ‘in between’. We find ourselves in dangerous places, in uncomfortable situations, and in unknown terrains. Liminal situations may therefore involve uncertainty, ambiguity, doubts, and fear. Yet, in Turner’s view, they may also initiate renewal and change.
Contributions might thus reflect upon the main theme in relation to our experience as ethnographers, the others who we study, and the emerging situation. They might focus on the anthropological home of the methods we use in entering the unknown; how we grasp its possibilities and cope with its limitations. Or they might tell us about the period and historical context in which specific practices and experiences arise and may be ‘undone’. The 9th Symposium will bring together keynote speakers, each familiar with worlds at the margins. Judith Okely studied Gypsies/Travellers, Gerald Mars focused on workplace crime, Geoff Pearson uncovers football crowds and their policing, and Trudy Rudge explores the difficult world of nursing. Each ventures into unfamiliar terrains. Each reveals worlds unknown to most of us. All, in the tradition of ethnography, use their own bodies and their person as their research instrument, exposing themselves to the raw realities, difficult demands and emotional risks of their chosen fields.
We particularly welcome papers examining practices and experiences of ethnographers, individuals, groups, organisations and societies when dealing with ‘threshold experiences’ such as during the construction and dissolution of boundaries, the demarcating of identities and territories, the developing of opportunity, the acceptance and rejection of loss and gain, the resistance to change, the development of new visions and possibilities, the ‘testing of waters’ and experimentation needed at personal and professional junctures in ethnographic projects. In keeping with past Symposia, the theme of the 9th Symposium is deliberately broad, inviting contributions from researchers in a variety of fields.
Conference Organisers
Professor David Weir
d.weir@ucs.ac.uk
Dr Manuela Nocker
mnocker@essex.ac.uk
Dr Mike Rowe
mikerowe@liv.ac.uk
Organising Committee
Dr Matthew Brannan, Keele University
Dr Ruth Strudwick, University Campus Suffolk
Keynote Speakers
Professor Gerald Mars, University Campus Suffolk
Professor Judith Okely, Oxford University
Dr Geoff Pearson, University of Liverpool
Professor Trudy Rudge, University of Sydney
Submission Details
Abstracts (up to 750-words), should be submitted to ethnog@liverpool.ac.uk in PDF format, saved as the authors surname followed by the paper title by Friday 7th February 2014.
Decisions on acceptance of papers, subject to external refereeing, will be given by email by the 28th of February, 2014.
We ask that delegates submit full papers prior to the conference no later than Friday 25th July 2014.
For full details, please see: www.liv.ac.uk/ethnography