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SCOS Update, May, part III

We have four items for you today
1) Information on the APROS-15 Colloquium at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, in February 2013
2) A call for sub-theme proposals for the 8th International Conference in Critical Management Studies at the University of Manchester in July 10-12, 2013
3) A fantastic experiment in critical friendship organised by VIDA, the Critical Management Studies Women's Association at the CMS conference, University of Manchester, 10th-12th July, 2013
Item 1:

APROS-15 Colloquium, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, 14th to 17th February 2013

Stream B: Alternative Modes of Organizing: Communitarian Dreams and Immediate Realities

Conveners:
Mihaela Kelemen, Keele University, UK
Anita Mangan, Keele University, UK
m.l.kelemen@mngt.keele.ac.uk
a.m.l.mangan@mngt.keele.ac.uk

The stream brings together researchers interested in alternative modes of organizing in response to the moral crisis that contemporary organizations appear to be facing. The focus will be on communal modes of organizing but the stream will not be restricted to them. Both conceptual and theoretical papers are welcome as well as papers taking a localized or a cross cultural perspective on the issues.

Throughout 20th century social theory, the rhetoric of ‘community’has been used to index the warmth of immediacy, emotion and close relationships and has been contrasted to the cold rationality and instrumentality of modern corporations, the state, and society (Fournier and Kelemen, 2001). The rhetoric of community has been invoked by politicians and policy makers as the answer to all sorts of social, economic and political problems such as nationalism, social exclusion, unemployment, education, crime and poverty. It has also been hijacked by managers and corporate bureaucrats who have proposed a ‘third way’ model of management which brings together elements of communal rhetoric and the market (Parker, 2002). Yet, however much time and money is spent on community initiatives, community remains elusive and its consequences unpredictable. In a similar vein, alternative modes of organizing remain under-researched in both main stream and critical management fields (Mangan, 2009).

Community has multiple and contested definitions and cannot be put to work according to some top down political or managerial agendas. Indeed, the myriad of ways in which community unfolds in practice calls for a 'bottom-up' approach, one that recognizes the paradoxes built into community rhetoric (Brent, 2004), the frequent lack of consensus and one that is sensitive to individual and social needs in equal measure. Moreover, the relatively recent rise of individualism and consumerism in Western societies and beyond calls into question existing conceptualisations of community and for a more imaginative way to engage with community rhetoric at the level of practice, be it organizational or societal practice.

In particular, we invite papers that:
· Explore the meanings, rationales and forms of communal arrangements over
· time and across cultures
· Analyse the promises of community and the extent to which they can
· materialize
· Explore potential links between community, charity and friendship
· Engage with volunteering processes and their impact on society and on
· local and personal communities
· Account for volunteering processes from a cross cultural perspective
· Discuss the threat of professionalization of voluntary organizations
· through governmentality
· Provide a critique of existing managerial accounts of managing the
· voluntary sector
· Present cases of Community Based Organizations
· Imagine alternative/communitarian forms of social organization

If you wish to be part of this stream, please submit a 300-400 word abstract to the stream convenors by 15 July 2012. Confirmation of acceptance of proposals will be sent on 17 August 2012.
The final collection will be published in a special issue of the International Journal of Organizational Analysis.

References:
Brent, J., 2004. The Desire for Community: Illusion, Confusion and Paradox. Community Development Journal, 39(3), pp. 213-223.
Fournier, V. and Kelemen, M., (2001) The crafting of community: recoupling discourses of management and womanhood, Gender, Work, Organization, 8/3, pp. 267- 290.
Mangan, A., 2009. ‘We’re not banks’: Exploring self-discipline, subjectivity and co-operative work. Human Relations, 62(1), pp. 93–117.
Parker, M., ed, 2002. Utopian and Organization. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing/The Sociological Review.


Item 2:

The 8th International Conference in Critical Management Studies – EXTENDING THE LIMITS OF NEO-LIBERAL CAPITALISM


University of Manchester, July 10-12 2013

CALL FOR SUB-THEME PROPOSALS

“A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress”.

In these famous opening lines of One Dimensional Man Marcuse begins to challenge the apparent wealth and progress of mass industrialised civilization during an era in which ‘we never had it so good’. Today that comfort, smoothness and reasonableness appears irredeemably lost offering little more than nostalgia if not a nostalgic fantasy for many living through the evenements of contemporary global capitalism. The impoverishment of an underclass and the degradation of the working class no longer shocks the sensibilities of academics and the intellectual elites but as the standard of living of the middle classes across Europe is slowly being eroded to help publically subsidise a corrupt and failing international financial system we are perhaps on the brink of new class alignments, social formation, struggles, and the emergence of new hegemonic blocs. In 2011 we have seen democratically elected governments and ministers in Greece and Italy toppled by the demands of central European bankers, and as the global financial markets swarm and prey upon the next domino in the chain of European currencies (Portugal, Spain …) we are left to ponder the apocalyptic possibility of widespread systemic crisis and breakdown.

Whilst the ‘very idea’ of democracy in the west seems to have fallen into radical doubt and uncertainty, it is being celebrated as a discourse of emancipation in many North African and Middle-eastern countries. As Timothy Mitchell (2010) has written, what we are witness to is perhaps the end of a twentieth century ‘carbon democracy’ that helped create and sustain particular patterns of international world order. We are doubtless yet to feel the full brunt of shock and reverberation that will resonate across the globe as oil slowly runs out, but this discourse of decline seems to coincide with the rise of a newly emerging series of global and economic powers – not least of which is China, but also Brazil, India, and Russia, who form part of a newly emerging elite currently being institutionalised through the auspices of the G-20 group of international finance ministers and central bank governors. What are the connections and relations between these developments and those complex and over-determined series of riots, occupations, violence, and protest that have returned to the streets of major cities across Europe? Marxiant versions of dialectical thinking and more post-marxist ‘relational’ forms of theorisation would enjoin us to connect this global phenomenon with more local features of management and organization - and in ways that invite us to consider new possibilities for economy and society. Are we entering a new conjuncture or crisis in which the limits of neo-liberal capitalism are increasingly exposed as ungovernable and un-manageable?

What does Critical Management Studies have to say to these issues? What contribution can scholars working within the traditions and latent possibilities of critical management studies make to our understanding of these limits of neo-liberal capitalism? In the past 15 years CMS has encouraged and developed a whole series of alternative and heterodox forms of theorising and practice that have challenged the ‘quietude’ of mainstream business and management studies whose scholars continue to operate as, in Baritz’s famous formulation, ‘the servants of power’. Since Foucault we may now be suspicious whether power and knowledge can ever be severed in ways that allow a realm of pure or value-free knowledge, but these assumptions continue to delude most research conducted for business and management studies. Marxism, post-colonial theory, feminism, critical race studies, queer theory, post-structuralism, and post-modernism were first introduced into business schools through the work of scholars associated with critical management studies. The empirical study of the darker sides of organizational life have also been pioneered within the CMS community – from corporate corruption, accounting and finance irregularities, to the subordination and oppression of minorities by mainstream technocratic managerialism.

We would like to encourage proposals that make efforts to restore those connections that exist between CMS and these ‘big picture’ preoccupations – connections that perhaps we were once embarrassed to consider given the critique of meta-narrative and the fear of totalising arrogance and theoretical hegemony. Clegg has recently chastised the community of organization studies for failing to address the ‘big stories’ of our time and we think CMS is well-placed to revive thinking, imagination and critique relevant to the concerns of our global futures. In its time CMS has been accused of a whole range of failings: for some it has encouraged introversion and self-indulgence, others find it totalising, all-encompassing and hegemonic. We also welcome these criticisms in the spirit of dialogue and critique, particularly given our concerns in this conference to develop thinking and practice around the contemporary limits of neo-liberal capital.

At this stage we are inviting stream proposals that address this theme and submissions are expected to include an outline of the proposed sub-theme (500-750 words), as well as a short description of the team of convenors, including their academic background and experience. We expect most of the submissions to be linked with the overall conference theme, but other submissions are also welcome. We particularly welcome proposals from convenor teams that are international in their composition with convenors coming from at least two countries. We are also keen to encourage critical proposals from the range of business and management studies subject disciplines (accounting and finance, human resource management, industrial relations, marketing, international business, etc).

Deadline for submission of sub-theme proposals: September 1st, 2012.

Convenors will be notified by September 21st 2012 of the outcome of their submissions

For any questions you might have regarding this call for sub-theme proposals please contact Damian O’Doherty from the local organizing committee (d.o’doherty@manchester.ac.uk).


Item 3:


An experiment in critical friendship
Organizers: VIDA, the Critical Management Studies Women's Association
CMS conference, University of Manchester
10th-12th July 2013

"A critical friend can be defined as a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data to be examined through another lens, and offers critiques of a person's work as a friend. A critical friend takes the time to fully understand the context of the work presented and the outcomes that the person or group is working toward. The friend is an advocate for the success of that work." (Costa and Kallick, 1993: #5)

The often masculinist tenor of academic writing and debate in Critical Management Studies - the tendency to machismo, incredulity, one-upmanship and acidity, as well as the continuing reliance on what one brand of feminism calls the Dead White European Men - can be regarded as a particular challenge for female scholars (Grey and Sinclair, 2006). So can the low numbers of senior female role models in academic institutions of all kinds. Equally, women who are fortunate enough to find sympathetic male mentors may end up on the receiving end of a variety of sexist judgements about their relationships with these men. And all of this is made yet more complicated and yet more persistent by the ways in which women (ourselves included) just as much as men enrol in the discourses which produce and reproduce these problematic effects. It is also important to acknowledge not only the "monotonous similarity" of academic gender relations, but also their "endless variety" (Rubin, 1975: 160) - cut across as they are by race, ethnicity, age, (dis)ability, sexuality, national origin and a whole host of other differences.

Two decades after the term 'Critical Management Studies' was originally coined (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992), following a wave of critical commentary on CMS itself and given the commitment of the CMS movement - however diverse - to changing oppressive social praxis, VIDA feels the time is ripe to challenge gender relations in the critical management academy and its cognate disciplines. One aspect of this challenge is to create collective spaces for reflection, connection, mutual support and knowledge formation and exchange. For us such practical interventions can enrich not only the theoretical resources available to scholars interested in gender, but also provide safe havens from which new collaborations, partnerships and friendships can emerge amongst women scholars.

This experiment in critical friendship is one such intervention, inspired in part by Ann Cunliffe's observation that

"We need to be much better at mentoring doctoral students and junior faculty, particularly outside Europe where only a few isolated 'critical' communities exist and where many find themselves the lone critical scholar in their institution. Let's build on the annual and bi-annual CMS meetings by offering ongoing support and mentoring throughout the year. It makes a difference when you have someone to talk to about how to do 'good' critical research, how to orient and write critical work, and how to get it published." (Cunliffe, 2008: 938)

Although precise details will be finalized as we draw nearer to CMS 2013, our plans for the experiment are as follows. Please note: participation in the experiment is limited to women:

1. Any female scholar - at whatever level - who is seeking constructive, friendly and supportive criticism from other women can submit a working paper in advance.

2. This paper could be anything from a set of preliminary notes and a sketchy outline all the way through to something which is almost ready to submit to a journal. It could equally be a paper which the applicant plans to present in one of the other streams at CMS 2013, or at any other conference. Draft chapters from doctoral theses are also very welcome.

3. The only criteria which will be used in terms of selecting the papers for our experiment will be the time, rooms and numbers of critical friends we have available. We will select papers on a first come, first served basis if we are not able to accommodate all submissions.

4. Women whose papers are discussed in the experiment can expect forty five minutes' feedback/ discussion of their work. They do not need to present the paper and there will be no formal discussants or respondents. Instead there will be a round-table, collegiate and egalitarian engagement with the author's ideas. The experiment is intended as a dialogue between peers: conventional academic hierarchies will not be in play.

5. All those attending the stream will be expected to have read the papers in advance and to come prepared to comment. Papers will be pre-circulated by e-mail and as such we ask those who are simply interested in attending to register that interest with us. This is an experiment which very much depends on generosity, because those attending and not submitting a paper will not get anything 'tangible' from the sessions.

6. The experiment will end with a session where participants reflect on the experience, the kind of space we have created, the type of dialogue involved, the extent to which we have succeeded in leaving conventional academic practices of peer review 'elsewhere', the balance between criticality and friendship we have managed to achieve and so on. Our hope is that we will be able to produce a reflective piece authored by everyone involved on this basis - as both a record of the experiment and a platform for future interventions of this and other kinds.

7. After the workshop, the discussion about and feedback on each paper will be written up and sent to the authors. If they desire, authors can also engage in a continuing dialogue with one of our critical friends about its progression.

Built into all of the above are the core VIDA values of equity, democracy, support, friendship, collectivism, challenge and intervention, amongst women, by women and for women. We are very much running this as an experiment, so it will be a trial and error process, but one we hope will proceed throughout according to these values.

To submit an abstract, please email Jo Brewis at j.brewis@le.ac.uk, by 31st January 2013. Please keep them fairly minimal: 500 words maximum and shorter if possible. We will then ask for (selected?) full papers by 1st May 2013. It is also possible to submit a full paper for consideration by the later deadline without having submitted an abstract in advance, although we will be operating a principle of first come first served as we indicate above.

Those who would simply like to attend as critical friends are also asked to email Jo at the same address by 1st May 2013 to confirm this.

The organizers of this experiment, on behalf of VIDA, are Alessia Contu, Sadhvi Dar, Carole Elliott, Jo Brewis, Martyna Sliwa, Sarah Robinson and Kiran Trehan.