In this article we develop the analysis and the conceptualization of the relationship between play and work within the increasingly aestheticized working life, drawing on the scholarship of Jacques Rancière and using images of playful office interiors as our empirical case. In doing so, we are able to add to the theorization of the uneasy relationship between the subordination of employee imagination and self to the agendas of the employer, typical of wage labor, and the strive for heteronomy and refiguring of the social order, characteristic of play.
This paper theorizes the spiritual processes of community entrepreneuring as navigating tensions that arise when community-based enterprises (CBEs) emerge within communities and generate socio-economic inequality. Grounded on an ethnographic study of a dairy CBE in rural Malawi, findings reveal that intra-community tensions revolve around the occurrence of 'bad events' - mysterious tragedies that, among their multiple meanings, are also framed as witchcraft. Community members prepare for, frame, cope and build collective sustenance from 'bad events' by intertwining witchcraft and mundane socio-material practices. Together, these practices reflect the mystery and the ambiguity that surround 'bad events' and prevent intra-community tensions from overtly erupting. Through witchcraft, intra-community tensions are channelled, amplified and tamed cyclically as this process first destabilizes community social order and then restabilizes it after partial compensation for socio-economic inequality. Generalizing beyond witchcraft, this spiritual view of community entrepreneuring enriches our understanding of entrepreneuring - meant as organization-creation process in an already organized world - in the context of communities. Furthermore, it sheds light on the dynamics of socio-economic inequality surrounding CBEs, and on how spirituality helps community members to cope with inequality and its effects.
This article uses the concept of style to rethink sustainable entrepreneurship. Our point of departure is the conceptual distinction between organization as style made durable and entrepreneurship as the disruption of style. We show that style is not simply an aesthetic category, but rather what ties different social practices together. While organization makes the connections between social practices durable, entrepreneurship disrupts such patterns. We further elucidate how organization and entrepreneurship are two intermingled processes – those of durability and disruption – that together enable the creation of new styles. In order to conceptualize this creative process, we explore how play can create disharmonies within the organization, but we also maintain that any new practice will remain marginal without a collective assemblage capable of adopting it. On this basis, we argue that sustainable entrepreneurship consists of making an environmentally friendly and socially conscious style durable, but also of disrupting such a style. In order to illustrate our argument, we use the example of the sustainable smartphone producer Fairphone. In conclusion, we argue that the concept of style may strengthen the dialogue between entrepreneurship studies and organization studies.
This paper explores the potential for morally sustainable leadership, i.e., leadership with an awareness of both light and dark sides contained in the role of the leader, as symbolized by the archetype of the king. A narrative enquiry aiming at the study of fictive stories authored by management theorists and practitioners from different contexts, interweaving collective individual elements, brings to light how issues of leadership goodness are related to each other and to other themes. The stories are presented as archetypical tales, that is, stories that touch profound aspects of culture and the psyche. They reveal what happens when people are asked to imagine a good manager, and how this results in tragic ironic representations, rather than tales of straightforward goodness.
Labyrinths and mazes have constituted significant spaces for tales of transformation, from prehistoric designs through the myth of the Minotaur and the pilgrimage design in Chartres cathedral to contemporary novels and pictorial representations. Labyrinths and labyrinthine designs can also commonly be found in present day organizations. This text, based on an ethnographic study as well as on an analysis of academic discourse, explores their significance as a symbol and as a physical structure. Drawing upon the notion of transitional space, it presents labyrinths as an indelible part of human experience, an archetype, and a sensemaking tool for understanding and explaining organizational complexity. The unavoidable presence of labyrinthine structures is presented as a counterpoise to the reductionist tendency towards simplification, streamlining and staying on-message, allowing or demanding space for reflection, doubt, and uncertainty.
In this article I present brand-centred control as a new form of normative control and examine the ways in which it affects employees. To do so, I draw on the results of a qualitative case study of a consumer products company with a strong corporate culture and brand, and examine internal branding as an extension of culture management. The key insights of the case study show that brand-centred control – unlike traditional normative control that typically works inside the company – also engages an external audience (customers, fans, and the wider public) as an additional source of normative control. As employees internalise the brand image of this external audience, they turn into brand representatives even in absence of face-to-face interactions with others and in their private lives. Brand-centred control thus blurs the boundaries between work and employees’ private lives in unprecedented ways. I discuss the ways in which employees respond to and resist brand-centred control and point to further research on brand-centred control as a significant new form of normative control.