Publications – Page 2

New Article: »Being (Ab)normal – Be(com)ing Other: Struggles Over Enacting an Ethos of Difference in a Psychosocial Care Centre«

This image was created by ChatGPT 4o with Dall-E 2 based upon the title of the article.

Please check out the new article entitled “Being (Ab)normal – Be(com)ing Other: Struggles Over Enacting an Ethos of Difference in a Psychosocial Care Centre,” co-authored with Bernadette Loacker and accepted for publication in Journal of Business Ethics. The abstract reads as follows:

Responding to recent calls from within critical MOS and organizational ethics studies to explore questions of difference and inclusion ‘beyond unity and fixity’, this paper seeks to enrich the debate on difference and its negotiation in organizations, thereby foregrounding difference as the contested and ever-changing outcome of power-invested configurations of practice. The paper presents an ethnographic study conducted in a psychosocial day-care centre that positions itself as a ‘space of multiplicity’ wherein ‘it is normal to be different’. Highlighting the context-specific challenges and struggles encompassing mental ill-health as a category of difference deviating from the norm, our paper contributes to a critical-affirmative understanding of difference. We foster an approach that values normative orientations such as ‘egalitarian difference’ and ‘difference as multiplicity’ yet avoids idealising portrayals of an ethics of difference that challenges normalcy and unconditionally favours otherness and calls for ‘radically other kinds of difference’.

Please contact us if your institution does not provide access to the full text of the article.

New Article in ‘Innovation: Organization & Management’: »Barracudas, Piranhas and crowds: making ideas valuable in pharmaceutical innovation through opening and closing practices of valuation«

Led by Katharina Zangerle, who collected data at a large pharmaceutical corporation in Austria and Switzerland, we are very happy to announce the first joint article by three members of the organization unit at the Department of Organization and Learning, as Katharina had teamed up with Richard Weiskopf and myself for crafting the article.

The study entitled “Barracudas, Piranhas and crowds: making ideas valuable in pharmaceutical innovation through opening and closing practices of valuation” is now available open access at Innovation: Organization & Management. The abstract reads as follows:

Attributing value to ideas is central in the journey from generating and elaborating ideas, to realising ‘creative’ products and processes. In this study, we explore the ways in which ideas are attributed value through practices of valuation in the innovation process. We examine valuation practices and intentionally and deliberately designed digital and analog spaces in pharmaceutical innovation across various stages of the ‘idea journey’. The findings shed light on the valuation of objects and emerging ideas as well as unveiling how pharmaceutical firms adapt valuation practices in times of crisis, when the imperative to generate novel solutions intensifies. The empirical case illustrates the interplay between ‘opening’ valuation practices, such as crowd votings facilitated by a digital ideation software, and ‘closing’ mechanisms, such as idea rankings within exclusive evaluation boards, or idea clustering through the digital device, as well as how these practices enable a working consensus on defining what qualifies as new and valuable within the organisation. While closing valuation with its quantifying practices might allow for efficient decision-making in organising novelty, it may turn out to be problematic when it comes to achieving organisational legitimacy in innovation processes. Balancing opening and closing mechanisms seems crucial in innovation processes, particularly in times of uncertainty. Taking a closer look at the spatial and temporal conditions and dynamics of valuation, as well as the role of digital technology in the production of value advances the understanding of how value is produced.

The research has been conducted in the realm of joint DFG and FWF research project on “Organized Creativity” and regulatory uncertainty in music and pharma.

New Article in The Conversation: “Why young workers are leaving fossil fuel jobs – and what to do if you feel like ‘climate quitting’”

Increasingly, we can observe employees leaving a job due to concerns about their employer’s impact on the climate or because you want to work directly on addressing climate issues. Together with Grace Augustine (University of Bath), I have published an article in The Conversation on this phenomenon, often referred to as “climate quitting”:

If you’re contemplating leaving your job over climate concerns, you’re not alone. Half of Gen Z employees (people born between the late 1990s and early 2010s) in the UK have already resigned from a job due to a conflict in values. And 48% of people aged 18–41 say they are willing to take a pay cut to work for a company that aligns with their sustainability values.

Check out the whole article “Why young workers are leaving fossil fuel jobs – and what to do if you feel like ‘climate quitting’” over at The Conversation.

Discussion Proposal: Increasing Vaccine Access in a Shorter Time

As we have all experienced recently, to prevent pandemic outbreaks or mitigate an evolving pandemic crisis, it is of utmost importance to guarantee timely and global access to safe and effective vaccines. Through their pre-print, Milena Leybold (University of Innsbruck) and Konstantin Hondros (University of Duisburg-Essen) make a step towards opening a debate on “Increasing Vaccine Access in a Shorter Time. Alternative Regulatory Frameworks in Response to Pandemics.”

População do DF conta com 47 tipos de vacinas e soros — Source: Agência Brasília, https://www.flickr.com/photos/64586261@N02/51330020291/

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New Article in Organization Theory: »Taking Individual Choices Seriously: A process perspective of self-selection in strategy work«

I am very glad to announce that the article “Taking Individual Choices Seriously: A process perspective of self-selection in strategy work”, co-authored by Martin Friesl, Martin Brielmaier and myself, has been accepted for publication at Organization Theory and is already available online. Particularly the growing interest in open approaches to strategy, which at least formally invite broad audiences to participate in organizational strategy-making, was one of the reasons for writing this paper. Not just because an invitation to participate cannot hardly intrinsic motivation to actually contribute but also because inviting everyone does not guarantee that you will actually arrive at a more diverse and inclusive bunch of people (see also Dobusch et al., 2019). The abstract reads as follows:

An increasing body of work investigates the participation of a diverse set of actors in strategy making. We argue that extant research tends to gloss over a fundamental condition underpinning such participation: while participation may reflect a hierarchical mandate, insofar as it relates to the actual involvement of employees, it is the result of a process of self-selection. From this perspective, forms of participative strategizing are neither fully the outcome of deliberate top-down choice, nor do they form a random pattern that is subject to the whims of individual employees. Such forms of strategizing are rather, as we argue in this paper, based on an endogenous logic of whether and how an individual self-selects, and in turn involves her/himself in the process, or not. To conceptualize the broader phenomenon of strategy participation, we draw on practice theory to conceptualize how individuals knowingly choose to involve themselves in strategizing events and we develop in turn a process model of self-selection as an ongoing social accomplishment. This model elaborates different patterns of participation in strategy making (stabilizing and shifting trajectories) with variable emergent outcomes. We end the paper by discussing the implications of our theorizing for ongoing research on open and participatory strategizing, and for the body of work on strategy as practice.

The paper is open access available at Organization Theory. Summary threads ft. #1paper1meme can be found over at Mastodon and Twitter.

Neuer Buchbeitrag: »’Schöne neue Lieferkettenwelt’: Workers’ Voice und Arbeitsstandards in Zeiten algorithmischer Vorhersage«

Im Rahmen eines von der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung geförderten Forschungsprojekts zum Verhältnis von ‘Predictive Risk Intelligence’ und Interessenvertretung in Lieferketten ist jetzt ein von Lukas Daniel Klausner, Maximilian Heimstädt und mir verfasster Buchbeitrag mit dem Titel “‘Schöne neue Lieferkettenwelt’: Workers’ Voice und Arbeitsstandards in Zeiten algorithmischer Vorhersage” (PDF) erschienen:

Die Komplexität und zunehmend enge Kopplung vieler Lieferketten stellt eine große logistische Herausforderung für Leitunternehmen dar. Eine weitere Herausforderung besteht darin, dass Leitunternehmen — gedrängt durch Konsument:innen, eine kritische Öffentlichkeit und gesetzgeberische Maßnahmen wie die Lieferkettengesetze — stärker als bisher Verantwortung für Arbeitsstandards in ihren Zulieferbetrieben übernehmen müssen. In diesem Beitrag diskutieren wir einen neuen Ansatz, mit dem Leitunternehmen versuchen, diese Herausforderungen zu bearbeiten: die algorithmische Vorhersage von betriebswirtschaftlichen, aber auch ökologischen und sozialen Risiken. Wir beschreiben die technischen und kulturellen Bedingungen für algorithmische Vorhersage und erklären, wie diese — aus Perspektive von Leitunternehmen — bei der Bearbeitung beider Herausforderungen hilft. Anschließend entwickeln wir Szenarien, wie und mit welchen sozialen Konsequenzen algorithmische Vorhersage durch Leitunternehmen eingesetzt werden kann. Aus den Szenarien leiten wir Handlungsoptionen für verschiedene Stakeholder-Gruppen ab, die dabei helfen sollen, algorithmische Vorhersage im Sinne einer Verbesserung von Arbeitsstandards und Workers’ Voice weiterzuentwickeln.

Der Beitrag ist Teil eines von Thomas Haipeter und anderen herausgegebenen Sammelbands “Soziale Standards in globalen Lieferketten: Internationale Richtlinien, unternehmerische Verantwortung und die Stimme der Beschäftigten”, der bei Transcript als Open-Access-Volltext verfügbar ist.

New Article: »Overcoming communicative separation for stigma reconstruction: How pole dancers fight content moderation on Instagram«

In this article in Organization, we, Milena Leybold and Monica Nadegger, unpack how stigmatized groups reconstruct stigma despite their communicative separation. We conducted a netnographic study to investigate a case of pole dancers—and later sex workers, strippers, and other stigmatized groups—protesting the stigmatization practice of shadowbanning and the sex-work stigma on Instagram.

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Neuer Buchbeitrag: “Chancen des Öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks”

Anlässlich ihres 50jährigen Bestehens hat die deutsche Otto-Brenner-Stiftung drei Open-Access-Sammelbände herausgegeben. Zum dritten Band “Welche Öffentlichkeit brauchen wir? Zur Zukunft des Journalismus und demokratischer Medien” durfte ich einen Beitrag mit Titel “Chancen des öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks” (PDF) beisteuern:

Demokratisierung bei Konsum und Produktion von öffentlich-rechtlichen Medien ist kein Selbstzweck, sondern bringt eine Reihe wünschenswerter Möglichkeiten und Angebotsverbesserungen mit sich – und führt letztlich zu einer stärkeren Unterscheidbarkeit zwischen öffentlich-rechtlichen und privat-profitorientierten Angeboten als Bonus obenauf.

Der Beitrag war auch Ausgangspunkt für meinen Vortrag im Rahmen der diesjährigen re:publica-Konferenz zum Thema “Weniger Netflix, mehr YouTube und Wikipedia: Zur Demokratisierung öffentlich-rechtlicher Medien”. Allerdings bin ich in dem Vortrag noch mehr auf die Potenziale dezentraler Digitalinfrastruktur eingegangen – etwas, das angesichts aktueller Entwicklungen rund um die Übernahme Twitters durch Elon Musk von besonderer Brisanz ist. Wer lieber liest als Videos schaut, für den liefert ein gemeinsam mit Jan-Hendrik Passoth verfasster Gastbeitrag im Tagesspiegel die Kerngedanken.

New Book Chapter: »Meta-organisations as Drivers for Sustainability across Tourism Clusters in the Alps«

We analyzed the case of “Alpine pearls” with a meta-organizational lens

Monica Nadegger and I are happy to share the news that our contribution to the volume “Clusters and Sustainable Regional Development: A Meta-Organisational Approach”, edited by Evgeniya Lupova-Henry and Nicola Francesco Dotti is now available online. The abstract of the chapter entitled “Meta-organisations as drivers for sustainability across tourism clusters in the Alps: A case study of ‘Alpine Pearls’” reads as follows:

The tourism industry faces the urgent need to change its business models to become more sustainable. However, to face such a global challenge, destinations must collaborate beyond their geographical boundaries. While tourism research has theorised intra-destination collaboration through the concept of tourism clusters, literature on organising collective action towards a common goal beyond destination boundaries remains scarce. This chapter takes a meta-organisational perspective to understand inter-destination collaboration with an illustrative example of ‘Alpine Pearls’ – a European tourism association for green mobility and sustainable travel. It shows the rationale for collaboration, the types of member organisations, and the decision-making structures typical for meta-organisations and tourism clusters. The research question looks at how ‘coopetitive’ intra-destination dynamics and meta-organisational inter-destination management can be combined to facilitate sustainable development. The study suggests that intra-destination ties in tourism clusters and inter-destination collaboration in meta-organisations can help destinations strive for sustainable development.

In case your institution does not provide access to the volume, I would be happy to send you a copy of the full-text of the chapter.