2015

December - Melbourne

Seminar on Age Labels at Work: Negotiated Masculinities

Loughborough University's Professor Christine Coupland presented her work on age in a working environment, where meanings of age categories and labels have material consequences for the individual. Making it important, as a result, to consider how age and gender intersect as inextricably experienced by the individual, yet organised in a social environment to meet organisational ends.

In contrast to much academic interest around gender and age, which focuses on the problematised older female worker, this seminar proposed that age and gender are vehicles of control across genders and ages.

The presentation drew on an empirical study of one masculine work organisation, employing predominantly young men – an elite UK professional rugby club. The seminar illustrated an infantilisation of the workforce, which produces particular modes of masculinity that render the workforce docile in an enacted hierarchy of masculinity.

Professor Coupland’s intellectual interests include issues of identity and language, drawing upon theoretical perspectives from organisation studies and constructionist social psychology. In addition to publications in JMS, Organization Studies, Organization and Human Relations, she has co-edited a special issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Management in 2012 - ‘Identities in action: Processes and outcomes’ -  is co-editing a book called ‘Perspectives on Contemporary Professional Work'.

November - Sydney

R2R Workshop

The University of Melbourne's Laureate Professor Cynthia Hardy, from the Management and Marketing Department,  presented an interactive workshop on responding to reviewers. Using exercises from actual reviewers’ comments and responses from a research paper that went from a ‘revise and resubmit’ through to a final acceptance, the aim of this workshop was to provide practical insights into:

  • how to decipher and respond to reviewers’ comments,
  • how researchers might use those comments as a way to develop their work, and
  • how to prepare responses for reviewers to help them understand how a paper has been improved.

The workshop also showed participants how to give feedback to colleagues on their papers from simply reading their responses to reviewers‘ comments.

November - Sydney

Training Workshop on Getting your Foot in the Door: Strategies for Gaining Access to Organisations

Panelists:

  • David Oliver, Work and Organisational Studies, University of Sydney (Chair),
  • Anya Johnson, Work and Organisational Studies, University of Sydney,
  • Jane Le, Work and Organisational Studies, University of Sydney,
  • Helen Parker, University of Sydney Business School, and
  • Jane Andrew, Accounting, University of Sydney.

This workshop involved a chaired panel discussion with experienced business school researchers who explored the challenges researchers face in securing research partnerships, access and funds from outside organisations.

Issues discussed included how to:

  • get in front of the right people at the right level,
  • craft a compelling narrative/short proposal for your research,
  • match your research requirements with the needs of the organisation,
  • how to ‘close’ the deal, and
  • liaise with and report back to the organisation.

October - Sydney

Workshop on the Paper Trail: Developing a Paper from Conception to Final Acceptance and the Bits In-Between

Professor Simon Restubog, Professor of Management and Organisational Behavior at the Australian National University, presented a publishing workshop, exploring the various stages of the development of a paper - from initial submission, including developing the theoretical foundation, through the many theoretical and empirical challenges to address, including responding to reviewer comments.

In tracing the paper through the revisions to the final accepted product, he shared some of the strategies that have enabled him to navigate the sometimes torturous revision process.

May - Melbourne

Workshop on Doing Time: Incorporating Time into Research

This workshop gave participants the opportunity to discuss the implications of time for their own research by considering:

  • temporal concepts that might be of use in organisational analysis,
  • how particular temporal constructs depend on one another for meaning and use,
  • which temporal constructs might already be embedded in our research,
  • which temporal constructs do we privilege in our work and what are the consequences of doing so, and
  • how we can develop and elaborate our research by ‘doing time’ more seriously and more critically.

Participating in the workshop was Professor Steve Cropper (Keele University, UK), who presented his work on the place of time in inter-organisational research, specifically within the management of partnerships/networks. His presentation reflected on whether it is possible to demarcate temporalities that have particular significance in inter-organisational inquiry.