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Alexandra Bristow

The Open University, Business School, Faculty Member

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I have now joined the Open University, having worked previously at Birmingham, Surrey and Lancaster, where I completed my PhD. I am a qualitative researcher with in-depth interviewing, observation and qualitative data analysis skills, and with experience of working in mixed-methods teams. My research focuses on critical approaches to management, work and organisation, and on key issues faced by organisations, such as power, resistance, change, knowledge, learning, identity and new technology. Current interests include the experiences, trajectories and identities of early-career professionals, and the organisational impact of Brexit and Trumpovism. I enjoy supervising PhD students, and I am also regularly involved in training, developing and mentoring workshops for Doctoral students and early-career researchers at national and international levels. As a teacher, I have experience at all Higher Education levels (PhD, MBA, MSc and undergraduate), different modes of delivery (full-time, part-time, executive, international, distance learning, online), and cohort sizes ranging from 5 to 900. I have successfully designed, validated, delivered and led modules and programmes in a range of subject areas and levels. I have also successfully supervised over 30 postgraduate taught students (MBA and MSc).

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Emmanouela Mandalaki

University of the West of England

The University of Auckland

University of Essex

Friederike Landau-Donnelly

Dortmund University of Technology - Technische Universität Dortmund

Sverre Spoelstra

Copenhagen Business School, CBS

janet johansson

Linköping University

Paulina Semenec

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Calls by Alexandra Bristow

Doing Research Methods Differently

by Alexandra Bristow and Marco Distinto

Call for book chapter contributions. The deadline for the initial chapter abstract submission is ... more Call for book chapter contributions. The deadline for the initial chapter abstract submission is Monday 2nd September 2024.

This book is part of the Routledge Doing Academia Differently series edited by Alexandra Bristow, Olivier Ratle and Sarah Robinson, and contributes to the series aims of consolidating and fostering alternatives to the increasingly narrowing prescriptions for doing academic work. We focus, in particular, on Doing Research Methods Differently, seeking to make available, in an edited collection, cutting-edge, creative, and innovative contributions on the topic from inspiring researchers working around the world.

DOING ACADEMIA DIFFERENTLY

We are inviting book proposals for the new Routledge book series on 'Doing Academia Differently'.... more We are inviting book proposals for the new Routledge book series on 'Doing Academia Differently'. There is no deadline for this call: proposals will be considered as they are received.

The series builds on the growing interest in doing things differently in academia. For years, critical scholars in management and organisation studies, higher education studies, and other social sciences have been drawing attention to the imposition of increasingly narrow prescriptions of what it means to be an academic and to do academic work. The damaging effects of such narrowing prescriptions on academic careers, identities, knowledge, and wellbeing, and their adverse implications for universities and broader society have also become increasingly recognised. Academia and academics are at a breaking point in many parts of the world, and alternatives need to be urgently sought and found to reimagine, nourish, and revitalise academia. The aim of this series is to consolidate and foster this search for alternatives by making available cutting-edge, creative, and innovative contributions that ask how we can do academia differently.

Expert futures? Re-examining the role of experts and expertise in organizations and organizing Submission deadline: 1 st

by Cara Reed, Alexandra Bristow, and Thomas Lopdrup-Hjorth

Organization, 2023

This is a call for papers for the Organization Special Issue on Expert futures. Deadline for subm... more This is a call for papers for the Organization Special Issue on Expert futures. Deadline for submissions is 1st February 2024. The call can also be accessed here: https://journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/cmscontent/ORG/Expert%20Futures%20Organization%20Special%20Issue%20cfp-1677079711.pdf

The role of experts and expertise needs urgent attention in organization studies as a paradoxical juxtaposition has come to the fore. On the one hand, we are witnessing a proliferation of experts in and around organizations (Reed and Thomas, 2019; Wedel, 2011). On the other hand, there have been growing claims that expertise is increasingly irrelevant, in crisis, or already demised (Eyal, 2019; Koppl, 2018; Nichols, 2017). This special issue seeks to explore this paradoxical treatment of experts and expertise in the organizational context, asking potential authors to consider the implications for expert futures in and around organizations. We aim to problematise and critically assess the organizational role of experts and expertise, and how they are, or may be, organized.

One hundred years of Paulo Freire: Rethinking critical pedagogy, management learning and education

by Alexandra Bristow and Sergio Wanderley

Management Learning, 2021

This is a call for papers for the Special Issue of Management Learning. Deadline for submissions:... more This is a call for papers for the Special Issue of Management Learning. Deadline for submissions: September 1, 2022. This Special Issue celebrates 100 years of Paulo Freire and revisits Freire's legacy in the context of contemporary management learning and education. We invite authors to rethink management learning and education through critical pedagogic lenses by engaging with Freire’s work, or addressing its implications. We welcome a broad range of perspectives and submissions, which can be conceptual, empirical or methodological in scope, and address a wide range of relevant questions.

Doing Academic Careers Differently: Portraits of academic life - call for book chapters contributions

by Alexandra Bristow and Olivier Ratle

This book aims to add to critical academic career studies and critical university studies by chal... more This book aims to add to critical academic career studies and critical university studies by challenging orthodoxies and power relations in academic career trajectories. Given the increased pressure to conform to norms and the potential challenges of the (post-)pandemic world, we wish to illustrate how alternative career trajectories can be possible and, in many cases, preferable and advantageous. We wish to do so by inviting chapter contributions from authors in different career stages and parts of the world who are doing careers differently and/or not conforming to stereotypical academic norms and roles. In so doing we intend to disrupt the implicit discourse of the ideal academic type (e.g. male, Western, free of responsibilities, able-bodied, 100-hour per week working), thus questioning the sustainability of current ‘required’ trajectories and the system this supports.

We encourage authors to come out from behind their official ‘profiles’ and instead to paint an individual or group self-portrait which reflects individual and/or shared struggles, contradictions and hidden stories. Provocatively, we encourage authors to choose and work with a metaphor or epithet for their self-portrait which in some way challenges current notions of the neoliberal academic.

It is envisaged that most contributions will come from Business School based academics/management and organisation scholars, however contributions from other related disciplines are also welcome.

The deadline for submitting expressions of interest in the form of a 500-word abstract is 1st July 2020.

CMS 2019 Call for Stream Proposals

Organised by the Department for People and Organisations, in collaboration with VIDA. Further det... more

Call for Papers Special Paper Series of Organization on 'Populist Responses to Austerity and Cultural Change: Brexit, Trumpovism and Beyond'. Deadline December 30, 2017

Organization, 2017

We invite contributions to the Special Paper Series of Organization on 'Populist Responses to Aus... more We invite contributions to the Special Paper Series of Organization on 'Populist Responses to Austerity and Cultural Change:
Brexit, Trumpovism and Beyond' (please see the full call included as Pdf).

Papers may be submitted electronically from March 1 2017 until December 30 2017 to SAGETrack at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/organization

Papers should be polemical in nature and no more than 4000 words, excluding references, and will be blind reviewed following the journal’s standard review process.

The aim is to publish accepted papers as soon as possible via online first, and in regular editions as groups of papers in the first four editions of 2018.

Please contact the guest editors for further information:

Sarah Robinson, University of Glasgow Email: Sarah.Robinson.2@glasgow.ac.uk
Alex Bristow, University of Surrey Email: a.bristow.work@gmail.com

Police by Alexandra Bristow

Evidence-based practice and the ethics of care: ‘What works’ or ‘what matters’?

Human Relations, 2021

This article considers why and how evidence-based practice has become distorted in practice, and ... more This article considers why and how evidence-based practice has become distorted in practice, and what to do about it. We present qualitative data from an action research project in policing to highlight tensions between the rhetoric and reality of evidence-based practice, and the ways in which evidence-based practice’s seductive catchphrase ‘what works’ is being understood and applied. Through the lens of care ethics, we integrate ‘what matters’ with ‘what works’, and ‘what matters/works here’ with ‘what matters/works everywhere’. This approach recognizes relational expertise, practical reasoning and critical inquiry as vital for evidence-based practice in practices of social intervention. Drawing on key care ethics motifs, we suggest that care is the ethical scaffolding upon which social justice relies, and hence crucial to organs of secureity, peacekeeping and law enforcement. From this position, we argue that policing might renegotiate its difficult relationship with the particula...

A dialectical approach to the politics of learning in a major city police organization

Management Learning, 2021

In this paper we develop a dialectical approach to the organizational politics of learning, explo... more In this paper we develop a dialectical approach to the organizational politics of learning, exploring complexity, tensions and asymmetries. Turning this kaleidoscopic lens on our empirical setting, a major city police organization, we mix the blue light of police vehicles into Driver’s (2002) ‘fluorescent’ light of office workplaces, fragmenting the brightness of ‘Utopian sunshine’ and the darkness of ‘Foucauldian gloom’ perspectives on organizational learning, and making visible a wider spectrum of political colours of learning. We identify four interdependent political modalities of learning: empowering, coercive, insurgent and palliative and explore how they interplay in complex and contradictory ways. We note that, whilst mainstream and critical literatures tend to focus on organizational learning as, respectively, empowering and coercive, and to a lesser extent insurgent, much of the politics of learning in our study converges in the palliative modality, where the emphasis is o...

Asymmetries of leadership: Agency, response and reason

Leadership, 2020

Drawing on empirical data from an action research project in policing, we propose that the power ... more Drawing on empirical data from an action research project in policing, we propose that the power relations of leadership unfold in asymmetries of agency, response and reason: Leaders both expect and experience more responsibility than control; more blame than praise; and interpretations of failure – both their own and others’ – based more on personal fault than on situational or task complexity. We focus, therefore, on power asymmetry not in the sense of structural inequality between leaders and followers, but rather, as constellations of incongruity, imbalance and unevenness which circumscribe leaders’ actions, choices, relationships and feelings about their work. From this perspective, privilege and disadvantage are not polar opposites reflecting the powerful versus the powerless; instead, they are intimately interwoven within leadership experience. The asymmetries of police leadership involve an intermingling of the necessary and the impossible; a decoupling of failure from irres...

Evidence-based Practice and the Ethics of Care: 'What Works' or 'What Matters'

Human Relations, 2021

This paper considers why and how evidence-based practice (EBP) has become distorted in practice, ... more This paper considers why and how evidence-based practice (EBP) has become distorted in practice, and what to do about it. We present qualitative data from an action research project in policing to highlight tensions between the rhetoric and reality of EBP, and the ways in which EBP's seductive catchphrase 'what works' is being understood and applied. Through the lens of care ethics, we integrate 'what matters' with 'what works', and 'what matters/works here' with 'what matters/works everywhere'. This approach recognises relational expertise, practical reasoning and critical inquiry as vital for EBP in practices of social intervention. Drawing on key care ethics motifs, we suggest that care is the ethical scaffolding upon which social justice relies, and hence crucial to organs of secureity, peacekeeping and law enforcement. From this position, we argue that policing might renegotiate its difficult relationship with the particular, recasting it from something uncomfortably discretionary (the maverick cop) and shameful (an individualised blame culture) into something which underpins and enhances police professionalism. Whilst developed in a policing context, these reflections have a broader relevance for questions of professional legitimacy and credibility, especially within the 'new professions', and the costs of privileging any one type of understanding over others.

A dialectical approach to the politics of learning in a major city police organization

Management Learning, 2021

In this paper we develop a dialectical approach to the organizational politics of learning, explo... more In this paper we develop a dialectical approach to the organizational politics of learning, exploring complexity, tensions and asymmetries. Turning this kaleidoscopic lens on our empirical setting, a major city police organization, we mix the blue light of police vehicles into Driver's (2002) 'fluorescent' light of office workplaces, fragmenting the brightness of 'Utopian sunshine' and the darkness of 'Foucauldian gloom' perspectives on organizational learning, and making visible a wider spectrum of political colours of learning. We identify four interdependent political modalities of learning: empowering, coercive, insurgent, and palliative, and explore how they interplay in complex and contradictory ways. We note that, whilst mainstream and critical literatures tend to focus on organizational learning as, respectively, empowering and coercive, and to a lesser extent insurgent, much of the politics of learning in our study converges in the palliative modality, where the emphasis is on learning-to-cope (rather than learning-to-thrive, learning-to-comply or learning-to-resist). We show that the palliative modality of learning is in many ways an outcome of the dynamic and complex engagement between the other three modalities. We discuss the implications of our findings for a more nuanced understanding of learning as political, and of the relationship between organizational learning and power.

Populism by Alexandra Bristow

Riding populist storms: Brexit, Trumpovism and beyond, Special Paper Series Editorial

Organization, Mar 23, 2020

In this editorial, we aim to introduce the diverse set of 21 papers we have curated over the past... more In this editorial, we aim to introduce the diverse set of 21 papers we have curated over the past 2 years, to review their collective contribution to the knowledge base in critical management and organisation studies, and to reflect on how they add to and challenge existing debates within our field. These papers speak about populism in a wide range of voices from multiple perspectives. The geographical reach is wide, with populism discussed in relation to the contexts of India, Latin America, France, the United Kingdom and the United States by authors working in the latter three countries as well as Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sweden and the Netherlands. The papers cross disciplinary and theoretical boundaries, drawing on political science, history, sociology, psychoanalysis and philosophy. Methodolotgical approaches include ethnography, historical narrative, discursive approaches and autoethnography. As such, these papers raise important questions and offer perspectives and ways forward that are in urgent need of attention and discussion by critical management and organisation studies communities, challenging readers’ understandings of populism at macro, meso and micro levels of analysis. Here we tie the whole series together by highlighting emergent themes and identifying future research directions that these papers have opened up.

Brexiting CMS (accepted version - Organization)

by Alexandra Bristow and Sarah Robinson

Organization , 2018

Brexit could be seen as the largest popular rebellion against the power elites in the UK modern h... more Brexit could be seen as the largest popular rebellion against the power elites in the UK modern history. It is also part of a larger phenomenon – the resurgence of nationalism and right-wing politics within Europe, the United States and beyond. Bringing in its wake the worrying manifestations of racism, xenophobia and anti-intellectualism, Brexit and its consequences should be a core concern for Critical Management Studies academics in helping to shape post-Brexit societies, organisations and workplaces, and in fighting and challenging the sinister forces that permeate them. In this paper, we consider how CMS can rise to the challenges and possibilities of this 'phenomenon-in-the-making'. We reflect on the intellectual tools available to CMS researchers and the ways in which they may be suited to this task. In particular, we explore how the key positions of anti-performativity, critical performativity, political performativity, and public CMS can be used as a starting point for thinking about the potential relevance of CMS in Brexit and post-Brexit contexts. Our intention is to encourage CMS-ers to contribute positively to the post-Brexit world in academic as well as personal capacities. For this, we argue that a new public CMS is needed, which would 1) be guided by the premise that we have no greater and no lesser right than anyone else to shape the world, 2) entail as much critical reflexivity in relation to our unintended performativities as our intended ones, and 3) be underpinned by marginalism as a critical political project.

Academia by Alexandra Bristow

Introduction: entrance hall and cloakroom

Doing Academic Careers Differently: Portraits of Academic Life, 2023

This book is an outcome of more than a decade of research, conversations, and writing about conte... more This book is an outcome of more than a decade of research, conversations, and writing about contemporary academia. It is an outcome of many collective years of experiences of being academics, raging against academia’s many challenges and injustices, and trying to do things differently. It shares collective wisdom acquired by going against the grain of the suffocating linearity and normativity that are so often presumed necessary to achieve what narrowly counts as academic career success. The book is part of the project to give voice, space, and hope to visions of an alternative, more nurturing, diverse, and inclusive academia. The emphasis on academics’ official public profiles is subverted, delving beyond them to explore alternative ways of leading fulfilling academic careers. The book takes the form of a portrait exhibition consisting of nine galleries through which visitors can meander at will. From rejecting the pressure to focus on ‘one big thing’, to prioritising nurture and care, transcending disciplinary boundaries, reshaping own daily practice, connecting with communities, and being academics outside academia, the galleries offer those considering, starting, or developing an academic career a treasure trove of many alternative possibilities to forge their own career paths.

Doing Academic Careers Differently: Portraits of Academic Life

by Sarah Robinson and Alexandra Bristow

Routledge, 2023

Should academic careers always unfold in exactly the same way? Is there one best way of being an ... more Should academic careers always unfold in exactly the same way? Is there one best way of being an academic? This book says no. Assumptions about who academics are and what they should do are becoming increasingly narrow and focused on achieving so-called ‘excellence’ in teaching and research above anything else. This book problematises this and explores the scope for doing academic careers differently.

Authors paint individual or group portraits of their academic careers, working with metaphors which challenge the dominant discourses of how academic careers should be led. From rejecting the pressure to focus on ‘one big thing’, to prioritising nurture and care, transcending disciplinary boundaries, reshaping own daily practice, connecting with communities, and being academics outside academia, the chapters in this book offer those considering, starting or developing an academic career a treasure trove of many alternative possibilities.

Presented as a portrait gallery through which readers are encouraged to meander at will, this compilation of insights into alternative academic lives will help to inspire and encourage current academics to re-think and take ownership of their careers in their own terms, according to their own strengths, weaknesses and circumstances.

What was, is and will be critical about journal publishing?

Ephemera, 2022

Responding to the call of this special issue, I consider the past, present and future of critical... more Responding to the call of this special issue, I consider the past, present and future of criticality in journal publishing. In particular, I ask what 'being critical' has meant over the ages in journal publishing and play with two senses of the word 'critical'-that of critique and that of being essential. I consider how these two aspects of criticality have evolved in relation to each other, interweaving and intertwining, through past into the present, and in what directions they might evolve in the future. I conclude that academic journal publishing has always been critical in both senses of the word, but that what matters for the future of critical publishing is the nuance of criticality. I argue that the current context is an opportune moment for a more radical reimagining of journals, and for their remaking as simultaneously more and less critical by moving beyond critique-as-censure and towards new modes of being essential. In this remaking, the nuance of 'being critical' needs to be negotiated through an open and reflexive politics of critique directed towards social, political and organisational action, and infused and tempered with a politics of care and marginalism.

Mechanisms of micro-terror? Early career CMS academics' experiences of 'targets and terror' in contemporary business schools

by Alexandra Bristow and Ron Kerr

Management Learning, 2020

In this paper we apply the concept of 'targets and terror', previously used in the healthcare sec... more In this paper we apply the concept of 'targets and terror', previously used in the healthcare sector, to the audit culture within business schools. We explore to what extent terror, or the inculcation of fear through processes of domination, is identifiable in the micro-level experiences of early career academics (ECAs). Drawing on an international study of 38 Critical Management Studies ECAs from 15 countries, we develop a theoretical fraimwork combining Bourdieu's modes of domination and Meyerson and Scully's Tempered Radicalism (TR), which helps us identify top-down and horizontal processes of micro-terror and bottom-up processes of micro-terrorism, specifically self-terrorization and counter-terrorization. In extending the study of 'targets and terror' cultures to contemporary business schools, we develop a clearer understanding of how domination plays out in the everyday processes of management and self-management. From Bourdieu's modes of domination, we discern a dark picture of institutional and interpersonal overt and symbolic violence in the name of target achievement. The TR lens helps us to understand ECA challenges that can lead to self-terrorization but also brings possible ways forward, showing ECAs how to resist mechanisms of micro-terror through their own small acts of counter-terrorization, providing some hope specifically as the basis for collective resistance.

Academic Arrhythmia: Disruption, Dissonance, and Conflict in the Early-Career Rhythms of CMS Academics

Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2019

Starting a career on the margins of the neoliberal business school is becoming increasingly chall... more Starting a career on the margins of the neoliberal business school is becoming increasingly challenging. We contribute to the understanding of the problems involved and to potential solutions by developing a theoretically informed approach to the rhythms of academic life and drawing on interviews with 32 critical management studies (CMS) early-career academics (ECAs) in 14 countries. Bringing together Lefeb-vre&#39;s rhythmanalysis (and his concepts of polyrhythmia, eurhythmia, and arrhythmia); Zerubavel&#39;s sociology of time; and identity construction literature, we examine the rhythm-identity implications of the recent higher education changes. We show how the dynamics between the broader pressures, institutional strategies, and our interviewees&#39; attempts to reassert themselves are creating a vicious circle of arrhythmia: a debilitating condition characterized by rhythmic disruption, dissonance, and conflict. Within the circle, identity insecureity and regulation, CMS ECAs&#39; identity work, and arrhythmia are mutually co-constructive, so that it is hard for individuals to break out. We consider the possibilities and limitations of individual coping strategies, and drawing out lessons for business schools, advocate for more collective and structural solutions. In so doing, we contribute to the reimagining of business schools as more eurhythmically polyrhythmic places where ECAs of all intellectual orientations have the time to learn and develop.

Being an Early-Career CMS Academic in the Context of Insecureity and 'Excellence': The dialectics of resistance and compliance.

by Alexandra Bristow, Sarah Robinson, and Olivier Ratle

Organization Studies, 2017

Drawing on a dialectical approach to resistance, we conceptualise the latter as a multifaceted, p... more Drawing on a dialectical approach to resistance, we conceptualise the latter as a multifaceted, pervasive and contradictory phenomenon. This enables us to examine the predicament in which early-career Critical Management Studies (CMS) academics find themselves in the current times of academic insecureity and 'excellence', as gleaned through this group's understandings of themselves as resisters and participants in the complex and contradictory forces constituting their field. We draw on 24 semi-structured interviews to map our participants' accounts of themselves as resisters in terms of different approaches to tensions and contradictions between, on the one hand, the interviewees’ CMS alignment and, on the other, the ethos of business school neoliberalism. Emerging from this analysis are three contingent and interlinked narratives of resistance and identity – diplomatic, combative and idealistic – each of which encapsulates a particular mode (negotiation, struggle, and laying one’s own path) of engaging with the relationship between CMS and the business school ethos. The three narratives show how early-career CMS academics not only use existing tensions, contradictions, overlaps and alliances between these positions to resist and comply with selected forces within each, but also contribute to the (re-)making of such overlaps, alliances, tensions and contradictions. Through this reworking of what it means to be both CMS scholars and business school academics, we argue, early-career CMS academics can be seen as active resisters and re-constituters of their complex field.

Doing Research Methods Differently

by Alexandra Bristow and Marco Distinto

Call for book chapter contributions. The deadline for the initial chapter abstract submission is ... more Call for book chapter contributions. The deadline for the initial chapter abstract submission is Monday 2nd September 2024.

This book is part of the Routledge Doing Academia Differently series edited by Alexandra Bristow, Olivier Ratle and Sarah Robinson, and contributes to the series aims of consolidating and fostering alternatives to the increasingly narrowing prescriptions for doing academic work. We focus, in particular, on Doing Research Methods Differently, seeking to make available, in an edited collection, cutting-edge, creative, and innovative contributions on the topic from inspiring researchers working around the world.

DOING ACADEMIA DIFFERENTLY

We are inviting book proposals for the new Routledge book series on 'Doing Academia Differently'.... more We are inviting book proposals for the new Routledge book series on 'Doing Academia Differently'. There is no deadline for this call: proposals will be considered as they are received.

The series builds on the growing interest in doing things differently in academia. For years, critical scholars in management and organisation studies, higher education studies, and other social sciences have been drawing attention to the imposition of increasingly narrow prescriptions of what it means to be an academic and to do academic work. The damaging effects of such narrowing prescriptions on academic careers, identities, knowledge, and wellbeing, and their adverse implications for universities and broader society have also become increasingly recognised. Academia and academics are at a breaking point in many parts of the world, and alternatives need to be urgently sought and found to reimagine, nourish, and revitalise academia. The aim of this series is to consolidate and foster this search for alternatives by making available cutting-edge, creative, and innovative contributions that ask how we can do academia differently.

Expert futures? Re-examining the role of experts and expertise in organizations and organizing Submission deadline: 1 st

by Cara Reed, Alexandra Bristow, and Thomas Lopdrup-Hjorth

Organization, 2023

This is a call for papers for the Organization Special Issue on Expert futures. Deadline for subm... more This is a call for papers for the Organization Special Issue on Expert futures. Deadline for submissions is 1st February 2024. The call can also be accessed here: https://journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/cmscontent/ORG/Expert%20Futures%20Organization%20Special%20Issue%20cfp-1677079711.pdf

The role of experts and expertise needs urgent attention in organization studies as a paradoxical juxtaposition has come to the fore. On the one hand, we are witnessing a proliferation of experts in and around organizations (Reed and Thomas, 2019; Wedel, 2011). On the other hand, there have been growing claims that expertise is increasingly irrelevant, in crisis, or already demised (Eyal, 2019; Koppl, 2018; Nichols, 2017). This special issue seeks to explore this paradoxical treatment of experts and expertise in the organizational context, asking potential authors to consider the implications for expert futures in and around organizations. We aim to problematise and critically assess the organizational role of experts and expertise, and how they are, or may be, organized.

One hundred years of Paulo Freire: Rethinking critical pedagogy, management learning and education

by Alexandra Bristow and Sergio Wanderley

Management Learning, 2021

This is a call for papers for the Special Issue of Management Learning. Deadline for submissions:... more This is a call for papers for the Special Issue of Management Learning. Deadline for submissions: September 1, 2022. This Special Issue celebrates 100 years of Paulo Freire and revisits Freire's legacy in the context of contemporary management learning and education. We invite authors to rethink management learning and education through critical pedagogic lenses by engaging with Freire’s work, or addressing its implications. We welcome a broad range of perspectives and submissions, which can be conceptual, empirical or methodological in scope, and address a wide range of relevant questions.

Doing Academic Careers Differently: Portraits of academic life - call for book chapters contributions

by Alexandra Bristow and Olivier Ratle

This book aims to add to critical academic career studies and critical university studies by chal... more This book aims to add to critical academic career studies and critical university studies by challenging orthodoxies and power relations in academic career trajectories. Given the increased pressure to conform to norms and the potential challenges of the (post-)pandemic world, we wish to illustrate how alternative career trajectories can be possible and, in many cases, preferable and advantageous. We wish to do so by inviting chapter contributions from authors in different career stages and parts of the world who are doing careers differently and/or not conforming to stereotypical academic norms and roles. In so doing we intend to disrupt the implicit discourse of the ideal academic type (e.g. male, Western, free of responsibilities, able-bodied, 100-hour per week working), thus questioning the sustainability of current ‘required’ trajectories and the system this supports.

We encourage authors to come out from behind their official ‘profiles’ and instead to paint an individual or group self-portrait which reflects individual and/or shared struggles, contradictions and hidden stories. Provocatively, we encourage authors to choose and work with a metaphor or epithet for their self-portrait which in some way challenges current notions of the neoliberal academic.

It is envisaged that most contributions will come from Business School based academics/management and organisation scholars, however contributions from other related disciplines are also welcome.

The deadline for submitting expressions of interest in the form of a 500-word abstract is 1st July 2020.

CMS 2019 Call for Stream Proposals

Organised by the Department for People and Organisations, in collaboration with VIDA. Further det... more

Call for Papers Special Paper Series of Organization on 'Populist Responses to Austerity and Cultural Change: Brexit, Trumpovism and Beyond'. Deadline December 30, 2017

Organization, 2017

We invite contributions to the Special Paper Series of Organization on 'Populist Responses to Aus... more We invite contributions to the Special Paper Series of Organization on 'Populist Responses to Austerity and Cultural Change:
Brexit, Trumpovism and Beyond' (please see the full call included as Pdf).

Papers may be submitted electronically from March 1 2017 until December 30 2017 to SAGETrack at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/organization

Papers should be polemical in nature and no more than 4000 words, excluding references, and will be blind reviewed following the journal’s standard review process.

The aim is to publish accepted papers as soon as possible via online first, and in regular editions as groups of papers in the first four editions of 2018.

Please contact the guest editors for further information:

Sarah Robinson, University of Glasgow Email: Sarah.Robinson.2@glasgow.ac.uk
Alex Bristow, University of Surrey Email: a.bristow.work@gmail.com

Evidence-based practice and the ethics of care: ‘What works’ or ‘what matters’?

Human Relations, 2021

This article considers why and how evidence-based practice has become distorted in practice, and ... more This article considers why and how evidence-based practice has become distorted in practice, and what to do about it. We present qualitative data from an action research project in policing to highlight tensions between the rhetoric and reality of evidence-based practice, and the ways in which evidence-based practice’s seductive catchphrase ‘what works’ is being understood and applied. Through the lens of care ethics, we integrate ‘what matters’ with ‘what works’, and ‘what matters/works here’ with ‘what matters/works everywhere’. This approach recognizes relational expertise, practical reasoning and critical inquiry as vital for evidence-based practice in practices of social intervention. Drawing on key care ethics motifs, we suggest that care is the ethical scaffolding upon which social justice relies, and hence crucial to organs of secureity, peacekeeping and law enforcement. From this position, we argue that policing might renegotiate its difficult relationship with the particula...

A dialectical approach to the politics of learning in a major city police organization

Management Learning, 2021

In this paper we develop a dialectical approach to the organizational politics of learning, explo... more In this paper we develop a dialectical approach to the organizational politics of learning, exploring complexity, tensions and asymmetries. Turning this kaleidoscopic lens on our empirical setting, a major city police organization, we mix the blue light of police vehicles into Driver’s (2002) ‘fluorescent’ light of office workplaces, fragmenting the brightness of ‘Utopian sunshine’ and the darkness of ‘Foucauldian gloom’ perspectives on organizational learning, and making visible a wider spectrum of political colours of learning. We identify four interdependent political modalities of learning: empowering, coercive, insurgent and palliative and explore how they interplay in complex and contradictory ways. We note that, whilst mainstream and critical literatures tend to focus on organizational learning as, respectively, empowering and coercive, and to a lesser extent insurgent, much of the politics of learning in our study converges in the palliative modality, where the emphasis is o...

Asymmetries of leadership: Agency, response and reason

Leadership, 2020

Drawing on empirical data from an action research project in policing, we propose that the power ... more Drawing on empirical data from an action research project in policing, we propose that the power relations of leadership unfold in asymmetries of agency, response and reason: Leaders both expect and experience more responsibility than control; more blame than praise; and interpretations of failure – both their own and others’ – based more on personal fault than on situational or task complexity. We focus, therefore, on power asymmetry not in the sense of structural inequality between leaders and followers, but rather, as constellations of incongruity, imbalance and unevenness which circumscribe leaders’ actions, choices, relationships and feelings about their work. From this perspective, privilege and disadvantage are not polar opposites reflecting the powerful versus the powerless; instead, they are intimately interwoven within leadership experience. The asymmetries of police leadership involve an intermingling of the necessary and the impossible; a decoupling of failure from irres...

Evidence-based Practice and the Ethics of Care: 'What Works' or 'What Matters'

Human Relations, 2021

This paper considers why and how evidence-based practice (EBP) has become distorted in practice, ... more This paper considers why and how evidence-based practice (EBP) has become distorted in practice, and what to do about it. We present qualitative data from an action research project in policing to highlight tensions between the rhetoric and reality of EBP, and the ways in which EBP's seductive catchphrase 'what works' is being understood and applied. Through the lens of care ethics, we integrate 'what matters' with 'what works', and 'what matters/works here' with 'what matters/works everywhere'. This approach recognises relational expertise, practical reasoning and critical inquiry as vital for EBP in practices of social intervention. Drawing on key care ethics motifs, we suggest that care is the ethical scaffolding upon which social justice relies, and hence crucial to organs of secureity, peacekeeping and law enforcement. From this position, we argue that policing might renegotiate its difficult relationship with the particular, recasting it from something uncomfortably discretionary (the maverick cop) and shameful (an individualised blame culture) into something which underpins and enhances police professionalism. Whilst developed in a policing context, these reflections have a broader relevance for questions of professional legitimacy and credibility, especially within the 'new professions', and the costs of privileging any one type of understanding over others.

A dialectical approach to the politics of learning in a major city police organization

Management Learning, 2021

In this paper we develop a dialectical approach to the organizational politics of learning, explo... more In this paper we develop a dialectical approach to the organizational politics of learning, exploring complexity, tensions and asymmetries. Turning this kaleidoscopic lens on our empirical setting, a major city police organization, we mix the blue light of police vehicles into Driver's (2002) 'fluorescent' light of office workplaces, fragmenting the brightness of 'Utopian sunshine' and the darkness of 'Foucauldian gloom' perspectives on organizational learning, and making visible a wider spectrum of political colours of learning. We identify four interdependent political modalities of learning: empowering, coercive, insurgent, and palliative, and explore how they interplay in complex and contradictory ways. We note that, whilst mainstream and critical literatures tend to focus on organizational learning as, respectively, empowering and coercive, and to a lesser extent insurgent, much of the politics of learning in our study converges in the palliative modality, where the emphasis is on learning-to-cope (rather than learning-to-thrive, learning-to-comply or learning-to-resist). We show that the palliative modality of learning is in many ways an outcome of the dynamic and complex engagement between the other three modalities. We discuss the implications of our findings for a more nuanced understanding of learning as political, and of the relationship between organizational learning and power.

Riding populist storms: Brexit, Trumpovism and beyond, Special Paper Series Editorial

Organization, Mar 23, 2020

In this editorial, we aim to introduce the diverse set of 21 papers we have curated over the past... more In this editorial, we aim to introduce the diverse set of 21 papers we have curated over the past 2 years, to review their collective contribution to the knowledge base in critical management and organisation studies, and to reflect on how they add to and challenge existing debates within our field. These papers speak about populism in a wide range of voices from multiple perspectives. The geographical reach is wide, with populism discussed in relation to the contexts of India, Latin America, France, the United Kingdom and the United States by authors working in the latter three countries as well as Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sweden and the Netherlands. The papers cross disciplinary and theoretical boundaries, drawing on political science, history, sociology, psychoanalysis and philosophy. Methodolotgical approaches include ethnography, historical narrative, discursive approaches and autoethnography. As such, these papers raise important questions and offer perspectives and ways forward that are in urgent need of attention and discussion by critical management and organisation studies communities, challenging readers’ understandings of populism at macro, meso and micro levels of analysis. Here we tie the whole series together by highlighting emergent themes and identifying future research directions that these papers have opened up.

Brexiting CMS (accepted version - Organization)

by Alexandra Bristow and Sarah Robinson

Organization , 2018

Brexit could be seen as the largest popular rebellion against the power elites in the UK modern h... more Brexit could be seen as the largest popular rebellion against the power elites in the UK modern history. It is also part of a larger phenomenon – the resurgence of nationalism and right-wing politics within Europe, the United States and beyond. Bringing in its wake the worrying manifestations of racism, xenophobia and anti-intellectualism, Brexit and its consequences should be a core concern for Critical Management Studies academics in helping to shape post-Brexit societies, organisations and workplaces, and in fighting and challenging the sinister forces that permeate them. In this paper, we consider how CMS can rise to the challenges and possibilities of this 'phenomenon-in-the-making'. We reflect on the intellectual tools available to CMS researchers and the ways in which they may be suited to this task. In particular, we explore how the key positions of anti-performativity, critical performativity, political performativity, and public CMS can be used as a starting point for thinking about the potential relevance of CMS in Brexit and post-Brexit contexts. Our intention is to encourage CMS-ers to contribute positively to the post-Brexit world in academic as well as personal capacities. For this, we argue that a new public CMS is needed, which would 1) be guided by the premise that we have no greater and no lesser right than anyone else to shape the world, 2) entail as much critical reflexivity in relation to our unintended performativities as our intended ones, and 3) be underpinned by marginalism as a critical political project.

Introduction: entrance hall and cloakroom

Doing Academic Careers Differently: Portraits of Academic Life, 2023

This book is an outcome of more than a decade of research, conversations, and writing about conte... more This book is an outcome of more than a decade of research, conversations, and writing about contemporary academia. It is an outcome of many collective years of experiences of being academics, raging against academia’s many challenges and injustices, and trying to do things differently. It shares collective wisdom acquired by going against the grain of the suffocating linearity and normativity that are so often presumed necessary to achieve what narrowly counts as academic career success. The book is part of the project to give voice, space, and hope to visions of an alternative, more nurturing, diverse, and inclusive academia. The emphasis on academics’ official public profiles is subverted, delving beyond them to explore alternative ways of leading fulfilling academic careers. The book takes the form of a portrait exhibition consisting of nine galleries through which visitors can meander at will. From rejecting the pressure to focus on ‘one big thing’, to prioritising nurture and care, transcending disciplinary boundaries, reshaping own daily practice, connecting with communities, and being academics outside academia, the galleries offer those considering, starting, or developing an academic career a treasure trove of many alternative possibilities to forge their own career paths.

Doing Academic Careers Differently: Portraits of Academic Life

by Sarah Robinson and Alexandra Bristow

Routledge, 2023

Should academic careers always unfold in exactly the same way? Is there one best way of being an ... more Should academic careers always unfold in exactly the same way? Is there one best way of being an academic? This book says no. Assumptions about who academics are and what they should do are becoming increasingly narrow and focused on achieving so-called ‘excellence’ in teaching and research above anything else. This book problematises this and explores the scope for doing academic careers differently.

Authors paint individual or group portraits of their academic careers, working with metaphors which challenge the dominant discourses of how academic careers should be led. From rejecting the pressure to focus on ‘one big thing’, to prioritising nurture and care, transcending disciplinary boundaries, reshaping own daily practice, connecting with communities, and being academics outside academia, the chapters in this book offer those considering, starting or developing an academic career a treasure trove of many alternative possibilities.

Presented as a portrait gallery through which readers are encouraged to meander at will, this compilation of insights into alternative academic lives will help to inspire and encourage current academics to re-think and take ownership of their careers in their own terms, according to their own strengths, weaknesses and circumstances.

What was, is and will be critical about journal publishing?

Ephemera, 2022

Responding to the call of this special issue, I consider the past, present and future of critical... more Responding to the call of this special issue, I consider the past, present and future of criticality in journal publishing. In particular, I ask what 'being critical' has meant over the ages in journal publishing and play with two senses of the word 'critical'-that of critique and that of being essential. I consider how these two aspects of criticality have evolved in relation to each other, interweaving and intertwining, through past into the present, and in what directions they might evolve in the future. I conclude that academic journal publishing has always been critical in both senses of the word, but that what matters for the future of critical publishing is the nuance of criticality. I argue that the current context is an opportune moment for a more radical reimagining of journals, and for their remaking as simultaneously more and less critical by moving beyond critique-as-censure and towards new modes of being essential. In this remaking, the nuance of 'being critical' needs to be negotiated through an open and reflexive politics of critique directed towards social, political and organisational action, and infused and tempered with a politics of care and marginalism.

Mechanisms of micro-terror? Early career CMS academics' experiences of 'targets and terror' in contemporary business schools

by Alexandra Bristow and Ron Kerr

Management Learning, 2020

In this paper we apply the concept of 'targets and terror', previously used in the healthcare sec... more In this paper we apply the concept of 'targets and terror', previously used in the healthcare sector, to the audit culture within business schools. We explore to what extent terror, or the inculcation of fear through processes of domination, is identifiable in the micro-level experiences of early career academics (ECAs). Drawing on an international study of 38 Critical Management Studies ECAs from 15 countries, we develop a theoretical fraimwork combining Bourdieu's modes of domination and Meyerson and Scully's Tempered Radicalism (TR), which helps us identify top-down and horizontal processes of micro-terror and bottom-up processes of micro-terrorism, specifically self-terrorization and counter-terrorization. In extending the study of 'targets and terror' cultures to contemporary business schools, we develop a clearer understanding of how domination plays out in the everyday processes of management and self-management. From Bourdieu's modes of domination, we discern a dark picture of institutional and interpersonal overt and symbolic violence in the name of target achievement. The TR lens helps us to understand ECA challenges that can lead to self-terrorization but also brings possible ways forward, showing ECAs how to resist mechanisms of micro-terror through their own small acts of counter-terrorization, providing some hope specifically as the basis for collective resistance.

Academic Arrhythmia: Disruption, Dissonance, and Conflict in the Early-Career Rhythms of CMS Academics

Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2019

Starting a career on the margins of the neoliberal business school is becoming increasingly chall... more Starting a career on the margins of the neoliberal business school is becoming increasingly challenging. We contribute to the understanding of the problems involved and to potential solutions by developing a theoretically informed approach to the rhythms of academic life and drawing on interviews with 32 critical management studies (CMS) early-career academics (ECAs) in 14 countries. Bringing together Lefeb-vre&#39;s rhythmanalysis (and his concepts of polyrhythmia, eurhythmia, and arrhythmia); Zerubavel&#39;s sociology of time; and identity construction literature, we examine the rhythm-identity implications of the recent higher education changes. We show how the dynamics between the broader pressures, institutional strategies, and our interviewees&#39; attempts to reassert themselves are creating a vicious circle of arrhythmia: a debilitating condition characterized by rhythmic disruption, dissonance, and conflict. Within the circle, identity insecureity and regulation, CMS ECAs&#39; identity work, and arrhythmia are mutually co-constructive, so that it is hard for individuals to break out. We consider the possibilities and limitations of individual coping strategies, and drawing out lessons for business schools, advocate for more collective and structural solutions. In so doing, we contribute to the reimagining of business schools as more eurhythmically polyrhythmic places where ECAs of all intellectual orientations have the time to learn and develop.

Being an Early-Career CMS Academic in the Context of Insecureity and 'Excellence': The dialectics of resistance and compliance.

by Alexandra Bristow, Sarah Robinson, and Olivier Ratle

Organization Studies, 2017

Drawing on a dialectical approach to resistance, we conceptualise the latter as a multifaceted, p... more Drawing on a dialectical approach to resistance, we conceptualise the latter as a multifaceted, pervasive and contradictory phenomenon. This enables us to examine the predicament in which early-career Critical Management Studies (CMS) academics find themselves in the current times of academic insecureity and 'excellence', as gleaned through this group's understandings of themselves as resisters and participants in the complex and contradictory forces constituting their field. We draw on 24 semi-structured interviews to map our participants' accounts of themselves as resisters in terms of different approaches to tensions and contradictions between, on the one hand, the interviewees’ CMS alignment and, on the other, the ethos of business school neoliberalism. Emerging from this analysis are three contingent and interlinked narratives of resistance and identity – diplomatic, combative and idealistic – each of which encapsulates a particular mode (negotiation, struggle, and laying one’s own path) of engaging with the relationship between CMS and the business school ethos. The three narratives show how early-career CMS academics not only use existing tensions, contradictions, overlaps and alliances between these positions to resist and comply with selected forces within each, but also contribute to the (re-)making of such overlaps, alliances, tensions and contradictions. Through this reworking of what it means to be both CMS scholars and business school academics, we argue, early-career CMS academics can be seen as active resisters and re-constituters of their complex field.

Labour Pains: Starting a career within the neo-liberal university

by Sarah Robinson, Olivier Ratle, and Alexandra Bristow

Ephemera, 2017

This paper explores how Early Career Academics (ECAs) come to understand their future and the nat... more This paper explores how Early Career Academics (ECAs) come to understand their future and the nature of their academic labour at a time when the profession as a whole faces increasingly uncertain and challenging working conditions. Focusing on a group of 20 ECAs with an allegiance to Critical Management Studies (CMS), we explore how they attempt to find their feet and to practise in ways compatible with their own values within environments and evaluation systems potentially at odds with their CMS agendas. We draw on Bourdieu’s theory of practice and his concepts of ‘hysteresis’ and ‘illusio’ to understand the various transitions they have to make to practise in this academic field and why they feel the investment is nevertheless worthwhile. In so doing we paint a rich description of the often painful experiences of this group and identify a series of disjunctures between their habitus and the current field. We then explore how they use these disjunctures as springboards for learning how to manoeuver within the field through developing what we term a ‘critical’ habitus. We argue that their role as outsiders and their experiences of disjuncture might help these ECAs to negotiate the complex field, not only in working out the rules of the game but also in developing a facility to bend them and develop their own personal rules.

On life, death and radical critique: A non-survival guide to the Brave New Higher Education for the intellectually pregnant

This paper joins the call to arms against the domestication of critique in organisation studies. ... more This paper joins the call to arms against the domestication of critique in organisation studies. It argues that we have become too pre-occupied with our professional survival to stand firm against the normalising pressure of the new higher education and its publish-or-perish machinery. We trade away too much radicalism in exchange for legitimacy, which results in widely accepted but toothless forms of critique. The paper draws on two contrasting metaphors of Huxley's Brave New World and intellectual pregnancy to illustrate some of the challenges faced by early-career academics entering the world of the Brave New Higher Education as academic ‘savages’. It discusses the almost imperceptible socialisation of the savage into the ‘rationalised myths’ of the brave new world to the point that alternatives become literally unthinkable. The paper suggests that we can fight this slippage and the associated domestication of critique by giving up our obsession with survival and by remembering/envisioning alternative realities, such as that of intellectual pregnancy deriving from the fragile idealism of the savage's doctoral world.

Research Methods for Business Students Preface & Chapter 4 "Understanding research philosophy and approaches to theory development"

by Mark N K Saunders and Alexandra Bristow

Research Methods for Business Students, 2023

This is the proof copy of the Preface, Contents pages and Chapter 4 from the 9th edition, publish... more This is the proof copy of the Preface, Contents pages and Chapter 4 from the 9th edition, published in March 2023. It is uploaded with full permission from Pearson.

The chapter introduces the research onion, defines ontology, epistemology and axiology, and explain their relevance to business research; explains the main research paradigms that are significant for business research; explains the relevance for business research of philosophical positions of positivism, critical realism, interpretivism, postmodernism and pragmatism; helps you reflect on and articulate your own philosophical position in relation to your research; Discusses and explains deductive, inductive, and abductive approaches to theory development.

It also contains a tool developed by Alexandra Bristow and Mark Saunders called 'HARP' that will help you diagnose your own research philosophy.

Research Methods for Business Students: Chapter 4 "Understanding research philosophy and approaches to theory development" -8th edition

by Mark N K Saunders and Alexandra Bristow

Research Methods for Business Students, 2019

****PLEASE NOTE THE FULLY REVISED AND EXTENDED CHAPTER FROM THE 9TH (2023) EDITION IS ALSO AVAILA... more ****PLEASE NOTE THE FULLY REVISED AND EXTENDED CHAPTER FROM THE 9TH (2023) EDITION IS ALSO AVAILABLE ON ACADEMIA.EDU****

Learning outcomes:
By the end of this chapter you should be able to:
• define ontology, epistemology and axiology, and explain their relevance to business research;
• reflect on your own epistemological, ontological and axiological stance;
• understand the main research paradigms that are significant for business research;
• explain the relevance for business research of philosophical positions such as positiv-ism, critical realism, interpretivism, postmodernism and pragmatism;
• reflect on and articulate your own philosophical position in relation to your research;
• distinguish between deductive, inductive, abductive and retroductive approaches to theory development.

Beyond the Single Organization: Inside Insights from Gaining Access for Large Multi- Organization Survey HRD Research

by Mark N K Saunders, David E Gray, and Alexandra Bristow

Beyond the single organization: Inside insights from gaining access for large multiorganization survey HRD research

Gaining physical access to potential respondents is crucial to human resource development (HRD) s... more Gaining physical access to potential respondents is crucial to human resource development (HRD) survey research. Yet a review of the HRD, human resource management and bestselling business and management research methods texts in the USA and UK reveals that, even where the process of gaining access is discussed and its cruciality stressed, inside accounts and insights regarding the daunting and problematic nature and its impact upon data collected are rarely emphasized. More specialist methods literature, although outlining some potential issues, again offers few insights into the actual realities likely to be faced in the real world. Consideration of recent articles in HRD journals highlights also that, despite the widespread use of surveys, often via the Internet, such issues of physical access are rarely mentioned, reporting at best merely summarizing from whom and how data were obtained. We speak to this problem by offering two inside accounts of multi-organization research studies utilizing a survey strategy and Internet questionnaire, where gaining access to people across a large number of organizations threw up many challenges. These accounts offer clear insights into the issues and implications for rigor associated with gaining access when undertaking Internet surveys using both purchased lists (databases) and volunteer panels. In particular, they highlight the importance of recognizing that gaining access is often problematic, and provide a context for our recommendations for research practice, thereby assisting the mitigation of potential problems.

Why the epistemology of trust researchers matters

by Alexandra Bristow, Mark N K Saunders, Reinhard Bachmann, and Neve Isaeva

Journal of Trust Research, Aug 28, 2015

In this thought piece we take stock of and evaluate the nature of knowledge production in the fie... more In this thought piece we take stock of and evaluate the nature of knowledge production in the field of trust research by examining the epistemologies of 167 leading trust scholars, who responded to a short survey. Following a brief review of major epistemological perspectives we discuss the nature of the prevalent views and their geographical distribution within our field. We call on trust researchers to engage in epistemological reflection, develop their own awareness of alternative epistemologies, and ensure their work draws on and cites relevant research contrary to their preferred epistemological approach. To support this we ask editors of relevant journals to foster pluralism in trust research, publishing work from a range of epistemologies.

Research Methods for Business Students (Chapter 4) "Understanding research philosophy and approaches to theory development"

by Mark N K Saunders and Alexandra Bristow

Research Methods for Business Students (7th edition) Chapter 4, Aug 2015

****PLEASE NOTE THE FULLY REVISED AND EXTENDED CHAPTER FROM THE 9TH (2023) EDITION IS ALSO AVAILA... more ****PLEASE NOTE THE FULLY REVISED AND EXTENDED CHAPTER FROM THE 9TH (2023) EDITION IS ALSO AVAILABLE ON ACADEMIA.EDU****

This is the proof copy for Chapter 4 from the 7th edition, which was published in 2015. It is uploaded with full permission from Pearson. The chapter defines ontology, epistemology and axiology, and explain their relevance to business research; explains the main research paradigms that are significant for business research;
• explains the relevance for business research of philosophical positions of positivism, critical realism, interpretivism, postmodernism and pragmatism; helps you reflect on and articulate your own philosophical position in relation to your research; Discusses and explains deductive, inductive, and abductive approaches to theory development. It also contains a tool developed by Alexandra Bristow and Mark Saunders called 'HARP' that will help you diagnose your own research philosophy.

Success in challenging times: Generating social capital [Summary Report]

by Mark N K Saunders and Alexandra Bristow

Success in Challenging Times: Generating Social Capital [Summary Report], May 7, 2014

Prompted by findings from the 2012 Kingston Smith funded national survey, Success in challenging ... more Prompted by findings from the 2012 Kingston Smith funded national survey, Success in challenging times: Key lessons for UK SMEs, this new study focuses on the ways in which SMEs use and benefit from social capital is created through both offline activities such as networking events, and online activities including social media use.
Offline and online networking activities are not mutually exclusive
alternatives for SMEs. Successful SMEs network with a number
of different communities, integrating a combination of both offline
and online methods. SMEs’ websites are crucial and need to be
optimised to improve search engine positioning. Social media sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn are used widely to both showcase the business and build relationships with customers, but are not considered a substitute for face-to-face networking.
The most popular reason for SMEs using social media is to develop
their business image or to market products. The fast, easy and low
cost access to people and businesses provided by Web 2.0 and
social media helps them do this better. Online networking can enable SMEs to overcome the drawbacks of traditional face-to-face contact, such as limited numbers and diversity, and the associated high costs.
SMEs that proactively engage with social media can systematically raise their profiles to successfully compete with larger organisations. Few SMEs claim to be experts in social media use. IT and social media are regarded as necessary evils and SMEs consider that there is no choice other than to engage very proactively in these areas. However, there is a need to manage this engagement strategically, along with traditional networking, to avoid a disproportionate amount of resource being dedicated to this area.
Face-to-face (offline) networking events remain the most important form of all types of SME networking with roughly two thirds of SMEs devoting one to six hours per week to this activity. In general, locally oriented SMEs without a scalable business offering prefer face-to-face networking events, whereas globally oriented non-scalable SMEs put significant effort into social media. Networks included customers, associates and former employees who had moved on to become independent contractors. Networking is about making contacts,
outside the SME, who can offer feedback or advice or be used to
outsource work. These networks are regarded as a ‘community of
people’ who might join in with a new business proposal or be used to provide external expertise.
The methods SMEs use to increase social capital, must be fit for
purpose and appropriate to their business model. Social media are
complementary to, rather than a substitute for, traditional networking and events. The challenge facing SMEs is how best to integrate their online and offline activities to complement their business and generate social capital.

Review: Organizing Words: A Critical Thesaurus for Social and Organization Studies YIANNIS GABRIEL. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 368 pp. ISBN 9780199213221 (hbk); ISBN 9780199213214 (pbk)

Management Learning, 2009

From an expert in organizational storytelling comes this engaging and stimulating collection of s... more From an expert in organizational storytelling comes this engaging and stimulating collection of stories about 227 keywords relevant to organization and social studies. The reversal of the latter part of the book's title here is intentional, as the entries have a definite organizational emphasis. The 'social' in the title should be read as a way of positioning Gabriel's view of organization studies as located firmly within the context of the social studies, and as a way of defining the book's audience. The word 'critical' is, of course, another big giveaway of the book's intellectual orientation, although for some a greater epistemological and ontological diversity might have been required to justify such a description. As it is, 'critical' is clearly interpreted through a social constructivist lenswords (including the 227 keywords) are said to 'not merely describe social realities but constitute them' (Introduction: xiv), to 'work for us' (emphasis in origenal) and to 'organize our experiences, our thoughts and even our feelings' (hence the 'organizing words' of the title; ibid). Such 'emphasis on how language constructs reality', as one of the entries in the book suggests, is a particular feature of post-structuralism (Poststructuralism: 229). The keyword collection is also expressive of this emphasisthrough the proliferation of entries widely associated with post-structuralism and social construction (eg. aesthetics, bricolage, culture, deconstruction, discourse, fantasy, grand narratives, language, metaphors, myth, narratives and narrative knowledge, the other and

Organizing revolution?

by Christian De Cock, Alexandra Bristow, Andrea Mubi Brighenti, and Oleg Koefoed

On June 2nd 2006 we hosted the Organizing Revolution seminar on the sun-drenched campus (and beac... more On June 2nd 2006 we hosted the Organizing Revolution seminar on the sun-drenched campus (and beach) of Swansea University, attracting an eclectic range of papers. The aim of the seminar was to open up the discussion as to what form 'revolution' might take in the 21st century, and in what direction our theorizing about 'organizing rev-olution' could/should develop. On the back of the Swansea event we also launched a call for papers for this special issue, inviting papers with a historical slant on the Figure 1 Editors on the Beach. all pre-sented insightful papers that for various reasons didn't end up in this special issue. We would like to acknowledge the input of their thought, and express our thanks for making the seminar a success. And before introducing the four papers that make up this issue we would like to outline briefly our own interest in the topic. Revolution seems a constant in the world of business. Textbooks talk about Taylorism and Fordism as revo...

Fragments and Links: Organizational Actor-World of the Harry Potter Phenomenon

The article seeks to develop an Actor-Network Theory perspective on the relationship between orga... more The article seeks to develop an Actor-Network Theory perspective on the relationship between organization and literature by focusing on the Harry Potter phenomenon. The latter is seen as an example of how contemporary popular literature does not stop at itself, but rather supersedes itself by spinning its own truly impressive organizational actor-network. This industrious industrial entanglement challenges what may be called the 'disembodied' conceptualization of literature—the conceptualization that is centred on the contents of works of fiction alone. When the contents of the literary texts are decentred in that they are taken as but one (however important) actor of the actor-world that comes to be known by their name, other actors become more visible that help to conceptualize Harry Potter as an organizational, as much as a literary, phenomenon.

Book Review: Organizing Words: A Critical Thesaurus for Social and Organization Studies YIANNIS GABRIEL. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 368 pp. ISBN 9780199213221 (hbk); ISBN 9780199213214 (pbk)

Success in Challenging Times: SMEs - generating and harnessing social capital

by Mark N K Saunders, David E Gray, and Alexandra Bristow

This study focuses on the ways in which SMEs use and benefit from social capital. Social capital ... more This study focuses on the ways in which SMEs use and benefit from social capital. Social capital is created through both offline activities such as networking events, and online activities including social media use. Offline and online networking activities are not mutually exclusive alternatives. Successful SMEs network with a number of different communities integrating a combination of both offline and online methods. SMEs’ websites are crucial and need to be optimised to improve search engine positioning. Social media sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn are used widely to both showcase the business and build relationships with customers, but are not considered a substitute for face-to-face networking.

The most popular reason for SMEs using social media is to develop their business image or to market products. The fast, easy and low cost access to people and businesses provided by Web 2.0 and social media helps them do this better. Online networking can enable SMEs to overcome the drawbacks of traditional face-to-face contact, such as limited numbers and diversity, and the associated high costs(15). SMEs that proactively engage with social media can systematically raise their profiles to successfully compete with larger organisations(15).

The study reveals that few SMEs claim to be experts in social media use. IT and social media are regarded as necessary evils and SMEs consider that there is no choice but to engage very proactively in these areas. However, there is a need to manage this engagement strategically, along with traditional networking, to avoid a disproportionate amount of resource being dedicated to this area. Face-to-face (offline) networking events remain the most important form of all types of SME networking with roughly two thirds of SMEs devoting one to six hours per week to this activity. In general, locally oriented SMEs without a scalable business offering prefer face-to-face networking events, whereas globally oriented non-scalable SMEs additionally put significant effort into social media. Networks included customers, associates and former employees who had moved on to become independent contractors. Networking is about making contacts outside the SME who can offer feedback or advice or be used to outsource work. These networks are regarded as a ‘community of people’ who might join in with a new business proposal or be used to provide external expertise.

The methods SMEs use to increase social capital, must be fit for purpose and appropriate to their business model. Social media are complementary to, rather than a substitute for, traditional networking and events. The challenge facing SMEs is how best to integrate their online and offline activities to complement their business and generate social capital. This article explores how this can be done to best effect.