Professor Stewart Clegg: A Critical Look at (Our) Organizational Practices

We start the visit with an open lecture and continue for three days with workshops with max 25 participants. The Monday workshop will continue with the theme set up by the open lecture. The Tuesday and Wednesday workshops will be introduced by professor Clegg and then continue on the day’s theme.

Monday 12. November

9-12 RDB14, room 5.125  
Open lecture
Sociology of Organisation, Honourable and Deferential

The talk draws the attention of scholars contributing to the broad field of organisation studies, especially that part of it that constitutes the sociology of organisations, to a problem regarding the maintenance of social order in practical intellectual life as a university employee. The focus is on the performance-related practices governing scholars. They elaborate powerful individuating forces that undermine the existing social order. The core concern is that this destructive tendency undermines the sociology of organisation as a legitimate form of social inquiry and ultimately undermines the capacity of organisational scholars to understand and improve social affairs.

12-13 Lunch break

13-16 RDB14, room 5.237 Workshop (with a coffee break):
Performance-related organizational practices

Tuesday 13. November

9-16 (with lunch and coffee breaks) RDB14, room 5.237
Workshop: Knowledge branding and collective governance in academia

Mehrpouya and Willmott (2018) define knowledge brands as “forms of market-oriented work undertaken when creating, maintaining and developing niches of research”. From a theoretical perspective, the knowledge brand case is used to analyse and conceptualize the manifestation of a widespread paradox that affects any form of collective action. From a practical point of view the aim is to expand the debate on the marketization/commodification of research and propose models to reimagine the orchestration of academic efforts, bringing about new forms of collegiality that recognise the need for contemporary academics to navigate the dominant neo-liberalist discourse.

Wednesday 14. November

9-16 (with lunch and coffee breaks) RDB14, room 5.237

Workshop: Open strategy problematics

With the term ‘open’ now routinely being used in discussions of strategy it stresses concerted social action in pursuit of innovation and opportunities for both internal and external actors. Openness is enabled by new technologies such as big data and blockchain. However, openness in strategy may be problematic when seen through the lens of politics. The politics of openness are theorized in terms of Clegg’s (1989) three circuits of power as flows. We discuss how new circuits of power are being created through control of obligatory passage points embedded in social media likes, illustrating potential problems posed for open systems of democracy by such use of social media.

Registration

If you want to attend (any of) the workshops, please send an e-mail to pirkko@hum.aau.dk by 15th of October, 2018, and indicate if you want to give a paper on the topic of the day or another topic you would like to have professor Clegg’s comments on. There is no fee to attend. A fuller programme will be published online after October 15th.

Download programme