Special Issues prior to 2013

2012

Special Issue of Culture and Organization on Crisis, Critique and the Construction of Normality: Exploring Finance Capitalism’s Discursive Shifts (Vol. 18, 2, 2012)

Authors:

Christian de Cock, Essex University
Leanne Cutcher, University of Sydney
David Grant, formerly University of Sydney

With the present-day organisational world increasingly dominated by finance, the events of 2007-09, where welfare on ‘Main Street’ was seen to be utterly dependent on a thriving ‘Wall Street’, ended any doubt over this once and for all.

Yet, this finance-dominated world has proven to be a strange place over the past three years, a place with an Alice in Wonderland quality where words, things, and people seem to hold together in rather tenuous ways.

This special issue brings together academics from a range of disciplinary backgrounds to revisit the various discourses of finance that have recently emerged and are still emerging.

Papers in the special issue identify, scrutinise and critique relationships between words, people and things – what Latour (2002) called “the strange specificity of human assemblages” – in ways that challenge dominant, taken-for-granted financial, organisational, and economic discourses.

Special Issue of International Journal of Work, Organization and Emotion on Emotion and Aesthetics: Organisational Space, Embodiment and Materiality (Vol. 5, 1, 2012)

Authors:

Leanne Cutcher, University of Sydney
Karen Dale, Lancaster University

While much has been written on the topic of emotion and the management of the aesthetic dimension of work, the interface between the emotional and the aesthetic continues to remain relatively neglected in empirical and theoretical analyses of gender and organisation.

With this in mind, this special issue considers some of the conceptual, methodological, empirical and theoretical aspects of this interface and contributes to the development of a more in-depth and focused understanding of gender, aesthetics and emotion in a number of important areas, including organisational space, embodiment and materiality.

Special Issue of Culture and Organization on Crisis, Critique and the Construction of Normality: Exploring Finance Capitalism’s Discursive Shifts (Vol. 18, 2, 2012)

Authors:

Christian de Cock, Essex University
Leanne Cutcher, University of Sydney
David Grant, formerly University of Sydney

This special issue brings together academics from a range of disciplinary backgrounds to revisit the various discourses of finance that have recently emerged and are still emerging.

Special Issue of International Journal of Work, Organization and Emotion on Emotion and Aesthetics: Organisational Space, Embodiment and Materiality (Vol. 5, 1, 2012)

Authors:

Leanne Cutcher, University of Sydney
Karen Dale, Lancaster University

2011

Special Issue of Academy of Management Review on Theory Development: Where are the new Theories of Organisation? (Vol 36, 2, 2011)

Authors:

Roy Suddaby, University of Alberta
Cynthia Hardy, University of Melbourne
Quy Nguyen Huy, INSEAD

This special issue follows on from special issues on theory development published in the Academy of Management Review in 1989 and 1999, focusing attention on such basic questions as "what is theory?" and "how is good theory developed?"

The current call challenges the field to reflect on and renew the forms of theorizing that we currently employ. The aim is to first, provoke debate about the relevance of theory in organisation studies and, second, to articulate new and emerging theoretical approaches to studying organisations.

The issues includes papers that identify new and important but understudied aspects of organisations, and which expand the scope and range of theory, particularly beyond 'normal science' to challenge the central questions and assumptions of management and organisation theory.

2010

Special Issue of Journal of Applied Behavioral Science on Organisational Discourse and Change (Vol 46, 1, 2010)

Authors:

Cliff Oswick, Cass Business School
David Grant, formerly University of Sydney
Bob Marshak, American University
Julie Wolfram Cox, Monash University

This special issue focuses on the role of discourse in relation to change processes and outcomes, with papers that connect talk and/or text with aspects of planned change initiatives, change leadership, organisation development or change management.

The primary purpose of this special issue is to develop critically informed insights into organisational change using discursive modes of inquiry and explore the nature and status of change initiatives as contingent upon and/or incorporating discursive activity.

The issue comprises contributions which use discursive methodologies as a means of inquiry into, and analysis of, organisational change processes and practices. Equally, submissions explore organisational change as discourse (or constituted through discourse) including empirical studies or case examples of how organisational change can be fostered or impeded through discursive practices.

Special Issue of Management Communication Quarterly on Communication and the Social Construction of Leadership (Vol 23, 4, 2010)

Authors:

David Grant, formerly University of Sydney
Gail Fairhurst, University of Cincinnati
Brad Jackson, University of Auckland
Keith Grint, Cranfield University

This special issue comprises six articles, with each drawing attention to leadership as a socially constructed phenomenon and the important role played by language and discourse in constituting the meanings, expectations, identities and images attached to leaders.

Earlier versions of several of the papers in the special issue were presented and discussed at a two-day international research symposium at the University of Sydney in February 2008.

The ICRODSC-funded symposium sought to examine the role of language and other symbolic media in the social construction of leadership and brought together scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including management and organisational studies and the communications field.

Special Issue of Research in the Sociology of Organizations on Technology and Organisation: Essays in Honour of Joan Woodward (Vol 29, 2010)

Authors:

Nelson Phillips, Imperial College London
Graham Sewell, University of Melbourne
Dorothy Griffiths, Imperial College London

This special issue marks 35 years since the death of Professor Joan Woodward, one of the founding figures of organisation studies, who died aged 54, just six years after the publication of her landmark book Industrial Organization, by critically re-engaging with her work.

At the time of her death, Prof Woodward chaired the Industrial Sociology at London's Imperial College, elected as only the second women professor at the College in 1970.

She joined the Production Engineering and Management Section of Imperial in 1958 and her most important work was published during this period.

Prior to this, she spent several years at the South East Essex College of Technology, where she conducted much of the empirical work that informed her significant contributions to the field.

2009

Special Issue of Human Relations on Constructing Identity in Organisations (Vol 62, 3, 2009)

Authors:

Sierk Ybema, VU University Amsterdam
Tom Keenoy, Cardiff Business School
Cliff Oswick, Queen Mary University of London
Armin Beverungen, University of West England
Nick Ellis, University of Leicester
Ida Sabelis, VU University Amsterdam

One symptom of individualism in liquid modernity is the search for `identity' so, using the five theoretically discrete articles in this special issue as both a `rich' discursive resource and a point of departure, the authors develop a supplementary reading of the narratives which appear to inform identity research.

The authors suggest that while social agents in pursuit of `identity' draw on a cacophony of discursive sources, it is the varieties of `self/other' talk which emerge as the critical ingredient in processes of identity formation.

The dualities that all such self/other talk articulate can be seen as discursive reflections of the more fundamental relationship between the individual and sociality. In turn, this is seen to refract one of the persistent problems of organisational analysis - the agency/structure issue.

In addition, while the authors argue that deploying a discursive perspective to analyse identity work offers distinctive insights, such an approach carries with it an epistemological consequence. For what the articles also indicate is that in any attempt to delineate the `identity of identities', researchers need to be aware of not only the reflexivity displayed by social actors constructing `identity' but also of their own role in `re-authoring' such scripts.

2007

Special Issue of Organization Studies on Institutional Entrepreneurship (Vol 28, 7, 2007)

Authors:

Raghu Garud, Pennsylvania State University
Cynthia Hardy, University of Melbourne
Steve Maguire, McGill University

The purpose of this special issue is to develop a deeper understanding of the concept of institutional entrepreneurship and to offer new avenues for future research.

This concept has been attracting considerable attention in recent years, as was reflected in the record number of papers that were submitted - the largest number that this journal has received for any of its special issues to date. As a result, the selection process was stringent and each of the eight articles in this special issue survived the demanding review process.

Each article contributes important insights to our understanding of institutional entrepreneurship and, collectively, provide an important benchmark for subsequent research on this phenomenon. In different ways, they explore how actors shape emerging institutions and transform existing ones despite the complexities and path dependences that are involved. In doing so, they shed considerable light on how institutional entrepreneurship processes shape or fail to shape the world in which we live and work.

2006

Special Issue of New Technology, Work and Employment on the Organisational Impacts of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (Vol 21, 3, 2006)

Authors:

David Grant, University of Sydney
Bill Harley, University of Melbourne
Chris Wright, University of Sydney

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems – integrated organisation-wide systems for monitoring, planning and reporting on a range of organisational inputs and outputs – are an increasingly pervasive feature of contemporary organisational life.

In spite of their widespread adoption, there is little research into their impacts on organisational practices and the way managers and employees' work is affected by them, with most research focusing on technical aspects of ERPs. Thus, many questions have remained unanswered. For example:

Do such systems increase managerial capacity for surveillance and monitoring of staff?
Do employees and managers perceive them as having positive or negative impacts?
How do organisational members resist the implementation of ERPs and how do they shape the systems to meet their needs?

This special issue brings together a series of contributions from Europe, Australia and the United States which seek to contribute to understanding the social and political impacts of ERPs within contemporary organisations.

Special Issue of Journal of Applied Behavioral Science on ICTs and Organisational Change (Vol 42, 3, 2006)

Authors:

Michael Barrett, Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge
David Grant, formerly University of Sydney
Nick Wailes, University of Sydney

This special issue focuses on the connections between Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and organisational change. The term ICT is adopted because it incorporates a range of the new technologies and new media impacting on organisations.

While it focuses on the issue of organisational change, the special issue takes a broad conception of change to include not just the changes that stem from introduction of ICTs, but also the extent to which organisational change initiatives are enabled (or indeed impeded) by ICTs.

Papers in the special issue examine the relationship between ICTs and organisational change from a variety of perspectives including narrative analysis. The collection includes a number of empirical studies of ICTs and change.

2005

Special Issue of Management Communication Quarterly on Resistance in Organisations: Processes, Forms and Discourses (Vol 19, 8, 2005)

Authors:

Leanne Cutcher, University of Sydney
David Grant, formerly University of Sydney
Grant Michelson, University of Sydney
Linda Putnam, Texas A&M

This special issue focuses on the role of discourse in the production, dissemination, and consumption of resistance both in terms of how resistance itself is organised, as well as resistance in organisations.

The papers in the special issue examine the concept of resistance itself and explore the inter-relationships or connections between resistance as discourse, and resistance and organisation. They adopt either a theoretical or empirical (including case study) approach to the discursive study of resistance and organisation.

In so doing, they take a variety of critical discursive perspectives and methodologies as well as conventional language-centred perspectives. Consequently the special issue can be seen as highlighting and debating the differences between such perspectives and how they affect our understanding of resistance.

2004

Special Issue of Academy of Management Review on Language and Organization: The Doing of Discourse (Vol 29, 4, 2004)

Authors:

David M Boje, New Mexico State University
Cliff Oswick, University of Leicester
Jeffrey D Ford, The Ohio State University

Language is not only content, it is also context and a way to re-contextualize content. We do not just report and describe with language, we also create with it. And what we create in language 'uses us' in that it provides a point of view (a context) within which we 'know' reality and orient our actions.

The purpose of this special issue is to expand on the second point of view of language by looking at organisations as phenomena in and of language. Rather than consider organisations as something that exists independent of language and that is only described and reported on in language, the contributors to this issue start from the point of view that organisations can be understood as collaborative and contending discourses.

As such, the authors consider organisations as material practices of text and talk set in currents of political economy and sociohistory in time and space. From this point of view, what an organisation is and everything that happens in and to it can be seen as a phenomenon in and of language. However, there are differing ways of engaging with organisations and organising as linguistic/discursive phenomena, which are explored in this special issue.

Special Issue of Organization on Alternative Perspectives on the Role of Text and Agency in Constituting Organisations (Vol 11, 3, 2004)

Authors:

Linda Putnam, Texas A&M University
François Cooren, Université de Montréal

Organisational discourse analysis, as an area of research, has grown in the past decade. Most scholars posit that language, regardless of the discursive form, is critical to the very nature of an organisation.

This special issue shows that discourse is more than an artifact or a reflection of an organisation, rather it forms the foundation for organising and for developing the notion of organisation as an entity.

The articles in this volume present different perspectives on the role of text and agency in contributing to the constitution of organisations. Although the concept of text has different meanings in these articles, it refers, in general, to the medium of communication, collection of interactions, and assemblages of oral and written forms.

Whether influenced by interaction analysis, structuration theory, text/conversation analysis or textual agency, these essays demonstrate how textuality in all its various forms participates in the production and reproduction of organisational life.

Special Issue of Organizational Studies on Organisational Discourse (Vol 25, 1, 2004)

Authors:

Cynthia Hardy, University of Melbourne
David Grant, formerly University of Sydney
Tom Keenoy, King's College, University of London
Cliff Oswick, University of Leicester
Nelson Phillips, University of Cambridge

This special issue contains six articles, including:

Rick Iedema and colleagues examining the discursive manoeuvres in which doctors engage so as to fulfill their dual and often conflicting identities as both manager and professional.
Linda Putnam exploring organisational negotiations by showing the different ways in which discourse constrains disputants or enables them to transform the nature of their disputes.
Patrizia Zanoni and Maddy Janssens studying how the discourse of human resource (HR) managers constructs diverse identities that relate to race, gender and disability.
Frank Mueller and colleagues examining how the rhetorical strategies of protagonists shape the 'reality' of new public management.
Andrew Brown investigating how reports of public enquiries are made authoritative in ways that depoliticises disaster events and legitimates certain social institutions.
Steve Maguire examining the discursive construction of scientific 'facts' that lead to product substitution and technological evolution.

David Grant and Cynthia Hardy wrote the introduction, on the theoretical, empirical and reflexive struggles associated with organisational discourse, while Tom Keenoy and Cliff Oswick wrote the afterword on organising textscapes.

The special issue was conceived with two ideas in mind - to show how studies of organisational discourse provide important insights into processes of organising and to take advantage of an opportunity to reflect on research practice at a time when discourse analysis is becoming increasingly influential within organisational studies.

Special Issue of Journal of Business Ethics on Ethics Investment and Corporate Social Responsibility (Vol 52, 1, 2004)

Authors:

Nick Wailes, University of Sydney
Grant Michelson, University of Sydney
Sandra Van der Laan, University of Sydney
Geoff Frost, University of Sydney

There is a growing body of literature on ethical or socially responsible investment across a range of disciplines. This special issue highlights the key themes in the field and identifies some of the major theoretical and practical challenges facing both scholars and practitioners.

One of these challenges is to understand better the complexity of the relationship between such investment practices and corporate behaviour, noting that ethical investment is seldom characterised by agreement about what it actually constitutes, and that much of the extant research focuses on a narrow set of issues. The special issues shows that there are benefits associated with examining ethical investment as a process.

Special Issues of Journal of Organizational Change Management on Discourse and Organisational Change (Vol 18, 1, 2004)

Authors:

David Grant, University of Sydney
Grant Michelson, University of Sydney
Cliff Oswick, University of Leicester
Nick Wailes, University of Sydney

Drawing on discourse analysis, papers in these two special issues seek to provide innovative analyses of organisational change, especially research that places a greater focus on the concept of change itself and which explores the inter-relationships or connections between change as discourse and change as strategy, as process and as a set of outcomes or forms.

In adopting a discursive approach, the published papers adopt both critical discursive perspectives, as well as conventional language-centred perspectives. The special issues also demonstrate and debate the differences between such approaches and how they affect our understanding of organisational change.

2002

Special Issue of Strategic Change on Rethinking Organisational Change (Vol 11, 5, 2002)

Authors:

David Grant, University of Sydney
Nick Wailes, University of Sydney
Grant Michelson, University of Sydney
Richard Hall, University of Sydney
Ann Brewer, University of Sydney

Papers in this special issue explore the different meanings of organisational change and the interrelationships between them across a diversity of organisational settings.

Adopting both theoretical and empirical approaches to the analysis of sources of change, the selection of change strategies and the factors that shape the strategy implementation process, they demonstrate that the notion of change itself is contested, suffused with multiple meanings and in need of re-conceptualisation.

Papers in the special issue examine these issues from a variety of perspectives including discourse analysis.