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SCOS Update April

A great edition of the SCOS update today: 7 sensational items, including:

1) SCOS 2014 conference details!
2) Two lovely jobs at the University of Bristol
3) Student grant available for the Rethinking Management conference
4) Special Issue Call for Papers: The Politics of Projects in Technology-Intensive Work
5) Dilemmas for Human Services 2014: Leadership in Public Services – Bridging the Management Gap? 17th International Research Conference, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. 10th-12th September 2014
6) An experiment in critical friendship. Call for workshop papers – Rethinking Sisterhood: The Affective Politics of Women’s Relationships. Feminist and Women Studies’ Association interim conference, University of Bristol, Saturday 13th September 2014. Organizers: VIDA, the Critical Management Studies Women’s Association
7) Share your own stories of volunteering as part of an interactive documentary drama!

Item 1:

The 2014 SCOS Conference – All details can be found on the SCOS website www.scos.org

Over the coming months we’ll be sending regular updates with regards to the SCOS conference, passing on details about workshops, travel arrangements, accommodation and exciting things to see and do in Utrecht…speaking of which…and all in the name of ‘serious fun’…did you know that in Utrecht … you can find this graffiti leprechaun anywhere across the city…!


Item 2:

Two jobs are on offer at the Department of Management, at the University of Bristol

Details on www.jobs.ac.uk shortly and on the University Website www.bristol.ac.uk
· Reader/Senior Lecturer in Management ACAD100768
· Reader/Senior Lecturer in Operations Management/Research ACAD100767


Item 3:

There is a fantastic student grant for the Rethinking Management conference that we advertised in the last email update. Please visit the follow website for further details!: http://rethinkingmanagement.org/student-conference-grant/

Item 4:

Special Issue Call for Papers: The Politics of Projects in Technology-Intensive Work

Guest edited by:
Damian E Hodgson, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester.
Monica Lindgren, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
Johann Packendorff, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
Svetlana Cicmil, Faculty of Business and Law, University of the West of England.

Projects represent the habitual context for much of the work associated with new technology; across a range of industries, the development and implementation of new technology is typically organised as a project, planned and controlled by project managers and project management methodologies, and often subject to project management technologies which monitor and report on progress against a schedule and a plan. Projects are the standard, even universal mode of organisation used to develop, enhance, implement or deliver new technologies through a time-bounded collective endeavour. The creation of the latest Xbox or PlayStation blockbuster, the design of the latest iPhone or the implementation of an ERP system typically relies upon practices, language, tools and methodology associated with the burgeoning field of project management. Indeed, in many technical fields, it is difficult to differentiate management as an institution from project management. For many technical experts across a range of industries, project work is inevitable if they want to exercise their expertise, and project management represents the only alternative career ladder to ever-increasing technical specialisation. Adopting project management, as a role or as a set of responsibilities alongside technical work, frequently requires technical professionals to learn and embrace a detailed set of project management methodologies for planning, monitoring and control of their own work and that of others, enshrined in globally standardised project management bodies of knowledge. Moreover, the enactment of project management frequently relies heavily on various technologies to enact control, from Gantt charts to Microsoft Project and more sophisticated tools, increasingly embedded in information systems.

In light of this, it is little surprise that much of the research into project organisations and project management from the earliest studies (Wilemon and Cicero, 1970; Morris, 1987) derives from studies of technical work, including R&D and new product development, typically in engineering, construction or IT. Only recently has research paid serious attention to the political consequences of project work; the pressure of precarious and discontinuous employment (Eskinsmyth, 2002; Koch, 2004), the multiple demands of multi-project work and leadership (Garrick and Clegg, 2001; Zika-Viktorsson et al, 2006), the transfer of organisational and managerial responsibilities onto individual workers (Hodgson, 2002), the implications of such conditions for work-life balance and gender discrimination (Lindgren and Packendorff, 2006; Styhre, 2011) and the larger political consequences of the rise of project management (Clegg and Courpasson, 2004). In many settings, projects also represent a ‘state of exception’ (Agamben, 2005; Gregg, 2011) where time and resource pressures normalise otherwise unacceptable working conditions.

This special issue of New Technology, Work and Employment (NTWE) seeks to explore key issues relating to the impact and implications of project work in technology-intensive settings, informed by recent work in Critical Project Studies (Hodgson, 2002, 2004; Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006; Cicmil et al, 2009). The aim is to draw together and build upon critical work examining the boundaries between management and technical work in project settings (Metcalfe, 1997; Barrett, 2001; Howcroft and Wilson, 2003), implications of the professionalisation of the project management role (Marks and Scholarios, 2007; Paton et al, 2013), the disciplinary effects of project work (Araújo, 2009; Gleadle et al, 2012), as well as broader work and employment issues relating to projects and project management in this area.

We are particularly interested in papers adopting a critical lens to address the following themes:
· PROJECT WORK: The political consequences for individuals of the practices, language, tools and methodology of project management in technology-intensive work.
· PROJECT MANAGEMENT AS CAREER AND EMPLOYMENT FORM: Political implications of short term work, the dual career ladder and the professionalisation of project management.
· PROJECT MANAGEMENT CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES: Critical analyses of the implementation of project management tools, including resistance to and transformation of such tools.

Other possibilities are encouraged and we invite potential contributors to discuss their ideas with the guest editor, by contacting in the first instance Damian Hodgson (damian.hodgson@mbs.ac.uk).

References
Agamben, G. (2005) State of Exception London: University of Chicago Press
Araújo, E. R. (2009). ‘With a rope around their neck’: grant researchers living in suspended time. New Technology, Work and Employment 24(3): 230-242.
Barrett, R. (2001). Labouring under an Illusion? The labour process of software development in the Australian information industry. New Technology, Work and Employment 16(1): 18-34.
Cicmil, S., Hodgson, D., Lindgren, M. and Packendorff, J. (2009). Project Management Behind the Façade. Ephemera 9(2): 78-92.
Clegg, S.C. and Courpasson, D. (2004) Political hybrids: Toquevillean views on project organizations, Journal of Management Studies 41(4): 525-47.
Eskinsmyth, C. (2002) Project organization, embeddedness and risk in magazine publishing, Regional Studies, 36(3): 229-243.
Garrick, J. and Clegg, S. (2001) Stressed-out knowledge workers in performative times: postmodern take on project-based learning, Management Learning 32(1): 119-34.
Gill, R. (2002) Cool, creative and egalitarian? Exploring gender in project-based new media work in Europe, Information, Communication and Society 5(1): 70-89.
Gleadle, P., Hodgson, D.E. and Storey, J. (2012). ‘The ground beneath my feet’: projects, project management and the intensified control of R&D engineers. New Technology, Work and Employment 27(3): 163-177.
Gregg, M. (2011) Work’s Intimacy Cambridge: Polity
Hodgson, D.E. (2002). Disciplining the Professional: The case of project management. Journal of Management Studies 39(6): 803-821.
Hodgson, D.E. (2004). Project Work: The Legacy of Bureaucratic Control in the Post-Bureaucratic Organization. Organization 11(1): 81-100.
Hodgson, D.E. and S. Cicmil (2006). Making Projects Critical. Basingstoke; Palgrave.
Howcroft, D. and M. Wilson (2003). Participation: ‘bounded freedom’ or hidden constraints on user involvement. New Technology, Work and Employment 18(1): 2-19.
Koch, C. (2004) The tyranny of projects: teamworking, knowledge production and management in consulting engineering, Economic and Industrial Democracy 25 (2): 277-300.
Lindgren, M. and Packendorff, J. (2006) What’s new in new forms of organizing? On the construction of gender in project-based work, Journal of Management Studies. 43 ( 4): 841-66.
Metcalfe, B. (1997). Project Management System Design: A social and organisational analysis International Journal of Production Economics 52(3): 305-316.
Morris, P.W.G. and G.H. Hough (1987). The Anatomy of Major Projects. Chichester; Wiley.
Paton, S., D. Hodgson, and D. Muzio. (2013). The price of corporate professionalisation: analysing the corporate capture of professions in the UK. New Technology, Work and Employment 28(3): 227-240.
Styhre, A. (2011). The overworked site manager: gendered ideologies in the construction industry, Construction Management and Economics 29(9): 943–55.
Wilemon, D.L. and Cicero, J.P. (1970). Project Manager: Anomalies and Ambiguities, Academy of Management Journal 13(3): 269-282.
Zika-Viktorsson, A., Sundstrom, P. and Engwall, M. (2006) Project overload: an exploratory study of work and management in multi-project settings, International Journal of Project Management 24(5): 385-94.

Articles should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words. All articles should be accompanied by a 150 word abstract. All submissions to the journal must be submitted online at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ntwe.

Deadline for first submission: 28 Nov 2014 (Reviews returned: Feb 2015). Resubmission: May 2015 (Second reviews returned: Sep 2015). Publication: 2016


Item 5:

Dilemmas for Human Services 2014 – Leadership in Public Services: Bridging the Management Gap?

17th International Research Conference
To be hosted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
10th-12th September 2014

Call for Papers
This Conference, organised jointly by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of East London, Luleå University of technology and Staffordshire University, provides a forum for policy, organisational and critical sociological analyses of the dilemmas facing the organisation and delivery of health, housing, education, social services and the human services generally.

With growing criticisms of managerialism and concerns over micro-management attention has shifted to leadership. The tragedy of the Mid Staffs hospital trust, for example, was too much inappropriate management and, possibly, not enough leadership (Francis Report 2013). More generally, leadership is currently seen as the more appropriate approach to engaging public sector professionals, who are generally disenchanted with managerialism and its perceived attacks on their autonomy and status. This year’s conference theme focuses on the rhetoric of leadership and its ability to tackle the challenges of delivering services in the context of continued austerity and public sector reforms.

We are all exhorted to be leaders, but how leadership differs from management and what skills or qualities leaders have that managers lack remains obscure and contested. Leadership theory has often tended to focus on traits or styles of leadership, yet it is difficult to find a coherent definition of leadership itself (maybe there isn’t one?). It is a diverse field, where leadership can be constructed to mean both leading from the front as well as distributed or collaborative leadership. How does the inspiring and charismatic aura of good leadership sit alongside the muscular, finance driven styles of management seen in public services today? How can professionals be leaders in the public sector where political leaders govern? Can there be leadership, rather than management, of public services when Government ministers can have such an immediate impact on service organisation or delivery?

Streams for the conference will be following:
· Management and leadership in the human services and public sector (Stream lead: tbc)
· New directions and strategies for managers and leaders in the public sector (Stream lead: Maria Wolmesjö, Linköpings University)
· Changing forms and limits of the New Public Management (Stream lead: Jennifer Gosling, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)
· Leadership and governance in the human services (Stream lead: tbc)
· Gender and leadership in the human services (Stream lead: Elisabeth Berg, Luleå University of technology)
· Policy, politics and leadership in the social welfare services (Stream lead: Jim Barry, University of East London)
· Leadership, information-technology and new directions for the human services (Stream leads: Christina Mörtberg, University of Linné and Sisse Finnken, Oslo University)
· Ethics and leadership in the human services (Stream lead: Mike Dent, Staffordshire University)
· New forms of professionalism (Stream lead: Mike Dent, Staffordshire University)

Papers on other related topics will also welcomed for consideration by the conference organisers.

We are delighted to confirm that our Keynote Speakers this year will be Albert Mills and Jean Helms Mills.

Albert Mills is Professor of Management and Director of the PhD (Management) program at Saint Mary’s University, Nova Scotia. From an early age issues of liberation and social change have been abiding concerns in his research. He has served as President of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada, and is currently the Executive Director of the Atlantic Schools of Business and Co-Chair of the Critical Management Studies International Board. He is the author/co-author and co-editor of over thirty books and edited collections, including Gendering Organizational Analysis (Sage, 1991); Identity Politics at Work: Resisting Gender, Gendered Resistance (Routledge, 2004); ANTi-History: Theorizing the Past, History, and Historiography in Management and Organizational Studies (IAP, 2012); The Routledge Companion to Critical Management Studies (Routledge, in press); The Routledge Companion to Management & Organizational History (Routledge, in press); The Oxford Handbook of Diversity in Organizations (OUP, in press) and Absent Aviators: Gender Issues in Aviation (Ashgate, in press).

Jean Helms Mills is a Professor of Management at the Sobey School of Business, in Halifax Nova Scotia and a Professor (2.0) at Jyväskylä University’s School of Business and Economics, Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research interests are in the areas of gender, historiography and critical sensemaking, from a Critical Management perspective and she has published in journals, including Organization, Organizational Research Methods, Culture and Organization, Gender, Work and Organization, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, Journal of Management History and Management and Organizational History. Jean is the author of several books and a number of book chapters and edited collections, including Making Sense of Organizational Change (Routledge, 2003); Understanding Organizational Change (Routledge, 2009). She is an Associate Editor for “Gender, Work and Organization”, as well as serving on the editorial boards of a number of journals. Jean is currently involved in several research projects funded by both the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Finnish government and is past Co-Chair of the Critical Management Studies Division of The Academy of Management.

This is the 17th International ‘Dilemmas’ Conference. Previous conferences have produced a number of publications, including Gender and the Public Sector (Routledge 2003), Questioning the New Public Management (Ashgate 2004) and special editions of the International Journal of Public Sector Management (2003)
Public Policy and Politics (2005), Socialvetenskaplig Tidskrift Volume 17 nr 3-4 2010 [Journal of Social Science] and Health Informatics Journal (2014 forthcoming).

It is intended that a selection of papers from this conference will also form the basis for an edited collection or a special edition of a journal. Each conference also provides participants with a free copy of proceedings.

Anyone interested in contributing a paper should submit a one-page abstract (400 words) to the Conference Organisers. The deadline for abstracts is the 25th April 2014. Decision on acceptance, following the refereeing process will be notified by the end of May.
For further information please contact the conference organiser:
Jennifer Gosling,
Faculty of Public Health and Policy,
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine,
15-17 Tavistock Place
London, WC1H 9SH
United Kingdom
Phone: +44(0)20 7958 8142
E-Mails: jennifer.gosling@lshtm.ac.uk

Conference web-site: http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/events/2014/09/dilemmas-for-human-services-2014


Item 6:

Call for workshop papers: An experiment in critical friendship

Rethinking Sisterhood: The Affective Politics of Women’s Relationships

Feminist and Women Studies’ Association interim conference, University of Bristol, Saturday 13th September 2014

Organizers: VIDA, the Critical Management Studies Women’s Association

“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, acid and all too often scathing tenor of academic writing and debate in academia can be regarded as a particular challenge for female scholars. 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. This is all made more complicated and more persistent by the ways in which women (the writers of this call included) just as much as men enrol in the discourses which produce and reproduce these problematic effects.

As a result, VIDA (http://www.vidascholars.org/ ) has been set up to establish a formal network which is consciously aimed at offering encouragement, advice and above all friendship to women academics at a whole variety of career stages whose work connects to Critical Management Studies, wherever they are located geographically and intellectually. We want to work collectively in order to ‘inhabit’ academia ‘differently’. We want to challenge the ‘automatisms’ of academic work that tend to reproduce existing processes and ways of being. 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 provide safe havens from which new collaborations, partnerships and friendships can emerge amongst women scholars.

This second experiment in critical friendship is one such intervention. VIDA ran our first experiment at the Critical Management Studies Conference in Manchester in July 2013 and you can see an article about the experiment here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/opinion/constructive-criticism-without-the-machismo/2005317.article

Participation is limited to women. Any female scholar attending Rethinking Sisterhood – at whatever level, in whatever discipline – who is seeking constructive, friendly and supportive criticism from other women can submit a working paper in advance. 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 also be a paper which the applicant plans to present in one of the other streams at Rethinking Sisterhood, or at any other conference. Draft chapters from doctoral theses are also welcome. We ask that the maximum length of any submission is 10 000 words. The only criteria used in terms of selecting the papers for our experiment will be the time 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. We have been allocated a 90 minute session at the Rethinking Sisterhood conference

Women whose papers are discussed in the experiment will not present their papers and there will be no formal discussants. A lead ‘critical friend’ will be assigned to each paper, just to kickstart discussion. Authors will also be asked to indicate to us when submitting whether there are areas of their work they are particularly keen to have comments on. This will be a round-table, collegiate and egalitarian engagement with the author’s ideas, a dialogue between peers: conventional academic hierarchies will not be in play. 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 those who are simply interested in attending will 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.

If time allows, the experiment will end with a session where participants reflect on the experience, the kind of space we have created, 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. If time does not allow, then this discussion can be held afterwards, online. After the workshop, where written feedback on each paper exists, it will be sent to the authors if they wish. Authors can also engage in a continuing dialogue with our critical friends about their work’s 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. The organizers of this experiment, on behalf of VIDA, are Jo Brewis and Sarah Robinson, both University of Leicester. To submit a working paper, or just to register interest in attending the experiment, please email Jo Brewis at j.brewis@le.ac.uk by 14th July 2014 at the latest. If submitting a paper, please indicate whether there are areas you are particularly seeking comments on. Enquiries about the experiment can be sent to Jo at the same address.


Item 7:

Would you like to share your own stories of volunteering?

As part of celebratory activities for the Volunteers’ Week, you are invited to
come along to our interactive documentary drama about Untold stories
of volunteering which will be performed on stage by volunteers rather than
actors. Under the sponsorship of the Arts and Humanities Research
Council, The New Vic Theatre (Newcastle under Lyme) has teamed up with
Keele and Leicester Universities and NCVO (National Council of Voluntary
Organisations) to create with members of our communities a moving
performance about the role of volunteering in our society. The drama
explores the emotions, aspirations and frustrations the volunteer encounters
on this journey towards a better society.

Dates and venues
June 5th , 2014 at 1.30 New Vic Theatre, Newcastle under Lyme
June 6th, 2014 at 2.45, Oxford House,Derbyshire Street,
Bethnal Green, London, E2 6HG.
June 7th, 2014 at 7pm, Richard Attenborough Centre, Leicester

R.S.V.P. and further details from Adhia Mahmood on:
amahmood@newvictheatre.org.uk