The international conference “A Great Transformation? Global Perspectives on Contemporary Capitalisms” at Johannes Kepler University Linz is re-evaluating the importance of the works by Karl Polanyi for contemporary social theory and analysis. All submitted papers are openly available at the conference website.
My talk on “Sharing Economy between Commons and Commodification” (PDF of the paper) is scheduled for the session on Friday, January 12, 9.00 a.m. at Science Park 1, MT 132.
Gemeinsam mit Maximilian Heimstädt durfte ich noch im alten Jahr einen Beitrag für die aktuelle Ausgabe von “Forum Wissenschaft”, der Zeitschrift des Bunds demokratischer Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler (BdWi) zum Thema digitale Bildung beisteuern. Der Lead-Text stammt zwar nicht von uns, trifft aber ziemlich gut, worum es uns in dem Beitrag geht:
Digitalisierung im Bildungsbereich gehört zu den meistdiskutierten Fragen, wenn es um Modernisierungen im Bildungswesen geht. Im Fokus der öffentlichen Debatte steht dabei vor allem eine umfassende Verbesserung der technologischen Ausstattung von Schulen. Doch der alleinige Blick auf den technischen Fortschritt ist unzureichend. Vielmehr kommt es auf offenen Zugang und freie Verfügbarkeit an, wie Leonhard Dobusch und Maximilian Heimstädt erläutern.
Leider ist Forum Wissenschaft selbst nicht offen zugänglich bzw. (noch) keine Open-Access-Zeitschrift. Mit Zustimmung der Redaktion – und dem Thema entsprechend – dürfen wir den Beitrag hier als PDF im Volltext unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung (CC-BY) zugänglich machen.
In the course of the joint research seminar by Julia Brandl and myself, we are happy to host Elke Schüßler, Professor on Organization at Johannes Kepler University Linz, with a guest lecture on “Focusing Events and Changes in the Governance of Garment Global Production Networks: The Case of Rana Plaza“.
Elke Schüßler does research and teaches on issues of management, focusing especially on dynamics of globalization, digitalization and climate change and the development of new forms of value creation. A particular interest revolves around the governance of organizations and interorganizational relationships on regional, national and transnational levels and the tension between path dependence and creativity in organizational and institutional change. She has recently co-edited a Special Issue on digital technology and creative industries in Technological Forecasting and Social Change and a book on new forms of value creation in the music industry. She is the winner of the Academy of Management Best Paper Award 2014 for her innovative research on UN climate conferences as field-configuring events.
The lecture will take place on Tuesday, December 6, 2016, from 18:00-19:30 at SOWI SR 8 and it is open to anyone.
The article by Yvonne Tobias-Miersch and myself on whistleblowing as a critical practice has been accepted for publication in Organization Studies and is now available online. Check out the abstract here:
In this paper, we develop an approach to the study of whistleblowing as a critical practice that is involved in the contestation of truth and power in the workplace. We situate our analysis in the context of practice-based thinking and specify the social practice of whistleblowing with reference to Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘parrhesia’ (frank speech). We then introduce the case of Guido Strack, a former European Union official who worked as section leader at the Office des Publications Officielles des Communautés Européenne from 1995 to 2002. Strack spoke out against malpractice in the EU in 2001 and officially reported alleged financial misconduct in 2002. In our analysis, we focus on the interplay between and effects of different modes of truth-telling in the context of this specific organization – a context marked by the uneasy coexistence of different normative and discursive frames. We argue that the parrhesiastic modality of truth-telling threatens the established ‘working solutions’ that reconcile the tensions inherent in the regime of practices and thus introduces a ‘critical opening’ that harbours the potential for both personal and organizational transformation. We conclude by highlighting the potential of a nuanced understanding of parrhesia for studying ‘critical practices’ more generally.
In case you or your institution does not have access to the publication, I would be happy to provide you a copy of the article via e-mail.
The Alumni-Team of the Master Program Organization Studies and the Transferstelle Wissenschaft – Wirtschaft – Gesellschaft invite to the 1st Organization Studies ConJunction Students and Alumni Day on November 25, 2016, 3:00 p.m. And this is the program: Continue reading “Reminder: 1st Organization Studies ConJunction Students and Alumni Day”
Am Mittwoch, 16. November 2016, 17:00 Uhr, findet im Kaiser-Leopold-Saal der Katholisch-Theologischen Fakultät Karl-Rahner-Platz 3, A-6020 Innsbruck die Antrittsvorlesung von Richard Weiskopf zum Thema “Wieviel ‚Wahrheit’ verträgt die Organisation? Die Praktik der parrhesia als Herausforderung für moderne Organisation.”
Antrittsvorlesungen richten sich an ein breites Publikum und wir würden uns freuen, bekannte Gesichter aus der Organization Studies Innsbruck Community dort zu sehen.
Details und eine ausführliche Biographie von Richard Weiskopf finden sich im Flyer zur Veranstaltung. Um Anmeldung wird bis spätestens Freitag, 11. November 2016, an veranstaltung-bw@uibk.ac.at gebeten.
Alle zwei Jahre werden an der Universität Innsbruck unter dem Titel “LehrePlus!” Preise für exzellente Lehre vergeben. In der Kategorie e-Learning wurde 2016 Leonhard Dobusch für seine wiki-basierte Lehrveranstaltung mit dem Titel “Open Organizations and Organizing Openness” ausgezeichnet (vgl. zu den Hintergründen des Kurses einen englischen Beitrag bei governance across borders). Die Preisverleihung in der Aula der Universität Innsbruck findet am 10. November 2016 um 17 Uhr statt (Einladungsflyer).
Thomas Gegenhuber and I have tracked open strategy-making practices on blogs of two ventures (Berlin-based mite and buffer in San Francisco) over the period of four years to answer the research question “how new ventures use open strategy-making as impression management over time?”. The article entitled “Making an Impression Through Openness: How Open Strategy-Making Practices Change in the Evolution of New Ventures” has now been accepted for publication in Long Range Planning as part of a special issue on Open Strategy (edited by Julia Hautz, David Seidl and Richard Whittington). The abstract reads as follows:
While previous open strategy studies have acknowledged open strategy’s function as an impression management instrument, their focus has mostly been on short episodes. The impression management literature, meanwhile, pays openness scant attention. By studying how new ventures engage in open strategy-making, we track how open strategy-making and respective impression management benefits evolve over time. Specifically, we draw on a comparative case study of two firms’ blog communication on strategy-related issues and corresponding audience responses over a four-year period. We identify three distinct modes of how organizations engage in open strategy-making with external audiences and show how each mode is related to a specific set of impression management effects. Having established the impression management functions of these modes, we then demonstrate how open strategy-making contributes to new ventures’ quests for legitimacy as they evolve. In the launch phase, dialoguing with blog audiences helps a venture attract endorsements for its organization and products. As the venture grows, concentrating on broadcasting relevant strategic information may attract media audiences’ additional support for pursuing openness as a desirable organizational practice.
Thomas has also blogged about our study. If your institution does not provide access to the article just e-mail me and I would be happy to share it with you. For more on open strategy-making in general and other contributions to the special issue in Long Range Planning, join the recently launched Open Strategy Network.
In addition to the OS ConJunction Community blog, we are happy to present a new Alumni portal on the official website of the unit of organization studies at University of Innsbruck. Continue reading “New Online Portal for Alumni of the Organization Studies Master Program at University of Innsbruck”
The 33rd EGOS Colloquium will take place from July 6–8, 2017 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and together with Georg von Krogh (ETH Zürich) and Richard Whittington (Oxford University) I will be convenor of sub-theme 50 on “Open Strategy: Practices, Perspectives and Problems“. Please find the Call for Short Papers below, submission deadline is January 9, 2017:
Many organizations in public, private and non-for-profit sectors are becoming more transparent about their strategies, while also including a wider range of actors in strategy development. These moves involve a variety of strategy practices, for example strategy jamming (Bjelland & Wood, 2008), strategy crowdsourcing (Stieger et al., 2012), strategy blogs and wikis (Dobusch & Kapeller, 2013) or strategy simulations in online games (Aten & Thomas, 2016). Although involving many different practices, this phenomenon has been described most comprehensively as ‘open strategy’ (Chesbrough & Appleyard, 2007; Whittington et al., 2011).
Building upon these studies, recent works on open strategy have begun to look at open strategy from an increasing variety of perspectives such as impression management (Whittington et al., 2016), middle-management inclusion in strategy-making (Wolf et al., 2014) or the inter-organizational explorations of strategic issues (Werle & Seidl, 2015). However, systematic cross-fertilization between the emerging open strategy literature and other areas and concepts of organizational openness are still rare. Continue reading “EGOS Sub-theme Call for Papers: »Open Strategy: Practices, Perspectives and Problems«”
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