APROS 11 – Performing Organization
Posted On: January 28, 2011
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Melbourne, Australia
4 – 7 December 2005
This theme invites you to view organizational phenomena through a prism that reflects organization and organizational life through facets such as performance, script, roles and action, and relationships with audience. The APROS 11 conference is an opportunity to take up this theme in broad and open-ended ways, considering topics relating to structures, processes, discourses, meanings, roles and identities — how these constitute organization, and how they are are enacted within organisation.
Steams vary in how directly they engage with these issues and metaphors. There is space for a wide range of papers and approaches with the various streams.
APROS is a forum where academics and practitioners, particularly from the Asia-Pacific region, convene to present ideas and proposals. We hope the theme will encourage all APROS’ friends to bring forward their expertise, research, and perspectives, to generate a provocative dialogue among participants.
APROS 11 – Keynotes
Posted On: January 28, 2011
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Keynotes will be presented by Stephen Linstead and Alicia S M Leung
Stephen Linstead (University of York)
Performing Organizational Research in Song and Music
Stephen Linstead’s keynote will be part presentation and part performance ethnography. It draws out the dimension of social research practice that is performance art rather than social science – and has its own form of validity. The performance involves a multi-media presentation and the playback of parts of a series of radio programmes – the Radio Ballads – which were written and broadcast in the late 50s and 60s. The programmes themselves were unique in that they used recorded speech – “actuality” – and linked it thematically via songs and incidental music specially written, but the songs used the words of the informants. It will present archival material together with material on the production and research processes through which that material was produced and has become available to us today. Stephen’s argument is that the two main “moments” of art – the poetic and the aesthetic – are present and can be revealed in the everyday, and that two further “moments” – the ethical and the political – are linked to these. It is the specific combination of these four which is the hallmark of an aesthetic social science in which the body takes its rightful place.
| Stephen Linstead began life with a curiosity for the world around him, especially if it resembled a cyborg, yet with an insouciant suspicion of extraneous requirements to perform – the photograph shows the closest he came to a smile in a two-hour session with a professional photographer at the age of 2. This innocent cynicism has served him well as he is now is Professor of Critical Management Studies at the University of York. From 2002-5 he was Professor of Organizational Analysis and Director of Research at Durham Business School, University of Durham from where he holds the degree of Doctor of Letters (DLitt). He has previously worked at Universities including Essex, Lancaster, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the University of Wollongong, New South Wales. As a schoolboy he overcame his natural reticence about performing and became something of an exhibitionist, appearing on national television as a folk singer at the age of 14 and making the reserve company of the National Youth Theatre (UK) at the age of 17. He performed traditional music and founded and taught a successful ritual sword dance team whilst taking his undergraduate (and later postgraduate) studies in the field of literature. He performed live, toured, recorded and broadcasted both with bands and solo during the 70s and 80s whilst doing his PhD research. More recently these sublimated tendencies have emerged in such publications as The Aesthetics of Organization (Sage 2000 with Heather Höpfl) The Language of Organization (Sage 2001 with Robert Westwood); Text/Work (Routledge 2003) and even Organization Theory and Postmodern Thought (Sage 2004); Organization and Identity (Routledge 2005 with Alison Linstead); Thinking Organization (Routledge 2005 with Alison Linstead); and Casual Organization TheoryDoing Qualitative Research in Management and Organization (Sage 2006) with David Silverman. An Academician of the Academy of the Social Sciences, he currently co-edits the journal Culture and Organization with Heather Höpfl and co-organises the bi-annual Art of Management and Organization conferences with Ian King and Ceri Watkins. He might not be a rock star but he smiles a lot more these days. (Sage 2005). He has published on ethnographic methods and is currently working on |
Alicia S M Leung (Hong Kong Baptist University)
Ethics, Dignity and Culture: Issues in Western and Asian Business Ethics
Business ethics is a relatively new and increasingly important discipline in many business schools. It is fair to say that dignity-based ethics dominate Western thinking on theoretical and applied ethics. While Western ethical systems emphasize rights deriving from intrinsic, inalienable dignity, in Confucian ethical systems, which mandate that individuals act as demanded by each relationship, dignity is acquired by cultivating an inner disposition toward reciprocity and by adhering to jen and li. Therefore, in Asian cultures structured around Confucian social relations, dignity is conditional as everyone does not possess equal value. Acquiring human dignity entails not only realizing one’s role-, gender- and class-based virtue but also taking note of others’ family background, occupation, and social position. Those in lower ranks should honour those of higher rank. For instance, it is not unusual for both Japanese and Western executives to accuse each other of being insincere – and sometimes dishonest. Confucian ethical systems have been ingrained in Asian cultures for centuries; yet the Western concept of business ethics is an emerging discipline throughout Asia. What is the relevance, if any, of whether or not normative global ethics and traditional Chinese moral philosophy are compatible with each other? I believe that the next major advance in business ethics will be a truly international approach that takes cultural differences into account.
| Dr. Alicia Leung is an Associate Professor of Management at Hong Kong Baptist University. She received her PhD in Management Learning from the University of Lancaster, UK. She is active in researching and writing materials about Asian organizations and management issues. Her research interests include gender issues and feminist methodology, business ethics, corporate governance, and strategic management in the Asian context. Alicia has published more than 30 articles in books and refereed international journals in these areas. Her latest book chapter, co-authored with Daryl Koehn, is ‘Western and Asian Business Ethics: Possibilities and Problems’, published by Kluwer Academic Publications in 2004. In addition, Alicia has presented at seminars and conferences around the world. In Hong Kong, she has developed short courses for businesses and professional bodies, and has run consultancy projects in the area of organizational management and business planning. Client companies include Hong Kong Personnel Management Club, China Light and Power, and government agencies. |
