This article provides a systematic attempt to analyze the effects of performance appraisals, here conceptualized as tools for executing disciplinary power, and how the agency of employees is shaped. The article demonstrates how agency is enrolled by a broad set of disciplinary technologies aimed...

This paper reports a study of a Swedish School company, characterized by charismatic leadership and a radical vision, trying to create and implement standard operating procedures. We illuminate how efforts to bureaucratize are given meanings quite different to conventional ones of experiences of...

Summary Research on management consultancy usually emphasizes the role and perspective of the consultants. Whilst important, consultants are only one element in a dynamic relationship involving both consultants and their clients. In much of the literature, the client is neglected, or is assumed...

The paper discusses collectivity in an organizational context. Collectivity refers to the interface between the social and the cultural. It is a social ’unit’, but it is defined through the meanings, definitions and distinctions of the people involved. The paper addresses cultural and...

Increasing attention is being given to professional services in organisation and management theory. Whether the focus is on organisational forms or service processes such as knowledge transfer, the role of clients is often seen as central. However, typically, clients continue to be presented in...

The paper addresses the formation of moral consciousness in organizations. In particular, it focus to what extent and how organizational arrangements encourage and/or prohibit the development and exercise of moral judgement among newspaper professionals. The paper draws empirically from a case...

This article reviews and discusses the contribution of William Starbuck's 'Learning by Knowledge-Intensive Firms'. Apart from situating Starbuck's article in its historical context and contemporary debates it is argued that the concept of esoteric knowledge and the focus on persuasion provides...

Organizational life is replete with claims for emancipation. Existing approaches understand these claims either through theories of macro-emancipation (which focus on larger social structural challenges) or micro-emancipation (which focus on everyday challenges). However, these theories...

Emancipation in organization studies and Jacques Rancière's philosophy

Summary This paper contributes to critical understandings of how international business is resisted. It develops a Neo-Gramscian approach that emphasizes the importance of informal or 'infra-political' processes. Current conceptualizations demonstrate how international business is challenged via...