While we note the usefulness of existing general management theories being applied as functional universals to diverse regions, these theories need to be enriched with concepts or terms that are unique to environments with unstable structural characteristics because of their singular historical and cultural development.

Academics and practitioners around the world are invited to contribute with their research and expertise in the academic program. In order to achieve a better understanding of different theory building processes and how they are understood in emergent or transitional economies.

Justification

Nascent concepts based on cultural hybridism, salient stakeholders, new humanism and pragmatism are emerging for theory building in management and organization studies. These new strands have particular relevance for studies of organizations in emergent economies because of the traditional management practices and organizational arrangements in these contexts, which have some degree of divergence from more rationalist assumptions and models.

There are notable common themes across organizations in developing countries or transition economies, based on contexts of localism, traditionalism and patrimonial organization.

Today, these economies are undergoing the ‘shock of the new’ as both externally sourced FDI and internally liberalizing economies opens them to wider rationalizations of modernity already institutionalized in the dominant global economies and societies. In this conference, we seek to build a coherent understanding of changes occurring in these organizations in these complex, emergent, and uncertain environments.

Monterrey, Mexico

December 6 – 9, 2009

The 13th Asia-Pacific Researchers in Organisation Studies (APROS) International Colloquium will be held at Graduate School of Business Administration and Leadership Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico.

The APROS 2009 conference seeks to create a better understanding of emerging theory building in management and organisation studies in organisations in complex, emergent, and uncertain environments. The conference will gather together international top academics, corporate managers and consultants to present their research and experiences, in order to discuss the main issues facing this challenge. Specially, APROS 2009 seeks to contribute to the development of novel theoretical frameworks and innovative research strategies in management and organisation studies.

For more details on APROS 13 please visit http://www.egade.itesm.mx/apros2009/

Highlights:

• Keynote speakers:
  • Stewart Clegg, University of Technology, Sydney and Aston Business School
  • Pradip Khandwalla, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
  • Pritam Singh, Management Development Institute and IIM-Lucknow
• Panel of Indian academics and corporate leaders ‘Response of Indian corporates to globalization and intensified competition: case example of MNCs in emerging economies’
• Prize of A$1,000 for the best paper by a postgraduate student — click here for details.
• Registration includes free trail access to recent articles in four major organization studies journals. See below for details.

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.

Keynote performance

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.

Keynote address

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.

Where there are multiple authors, in some cases only the first author is named here.

The theatre of organization

Performing ethics

Performing selves

Un-doing gender

Organization and representation

Spaces as settings & stages

Solidarity without class / class without solidarity?

Towards transgression and radical novelty in research

Strategy as practice

The dynamics of engagement

Internationalizing IB

Sustainable performing organizations?

Knowledge management and organizational learning

Power and legitimacy

Workshop on institutional theory

Cultural and cross-cultural issues

Leadership, teams and performance

STREAM CONVENERS

Peter Fleming
Queen Mary, University of London,
Email: p.fleming@qmul.ac.uk

Christina Garsten
Score, Stockholm University,
Email: christina.garsten@socant.su.se

Axel Haunschild
University of Trier,
Email: haunschild@uni-trier.de

In the wake of globalizing forces (social, financial, political), organizational boundaries are being transcended, re-drawn, as well as erected. The rise of project-based forms of organizing, new career patterns, flexible forms of employment and hybrid organizational forms (e.g. alliances, networks) have lead to changing organizational boundaries. It is common understanding that organizational boundaries have become ‘fluid’ and more complex (Leng/Dahles 2005) or ‘blurred’ (Marchington et al. 2005). Some authors have even declared the ‘boundaryless organi-zation’ (Kerr/Ulrich 1993; Nelson 1997).
From a theoretical perspective the notion of ‘blurred’ or ‘blurring’ organizational boundaries (and certainly that of ‘boundaryless’ organizations) itself appears to be somewhat blurred. A look at Marchington et al.’s intriguing and seminal edited book on the topic, for example, reveals that most contributors prefer to talk about ‘boundary-spanning’ or ‘crossing organizational boundaries’ rather than blurredness, which confirms rather than questions the existence of (howsoever defined) organizational boundaries. Nonetheless the identification of organizational boundaries has become more difficult – for managers, workers, as well as scholars of organiza-tion studies, but also for legal practitioners and regulating authorities. This is evinced, for exam-ple, in the fragmented political authority which has given rise to transboundary accountability standards in the area of CSR.

But, one could also argue that organizational boundaries have never been as clear as we tend to believe. Bureaucratic organizations are characterized by membership rules and law codifies the social invention of corporate actors with rights, responsibilities and accountability. However, the lifeworlds of organizational members have always had an impact on organizational practices (Sandberg/Dall’Alba 2009; Warhurst et al. 2008), and the life ‘inside’ organizations is not clearly separable from that outside organizations; see, for example, communities of industrial workers, emotional labour, management policies that put demand on workers to be authentic (Fleming 2009) or organizational demands to align private lives with organizational requirements (Land/Taylor 2010). There is much to suggest that it is at the very interface of organizations, in the friction zone of differential influences, that much negotiation as to the boundaries of the or-ganization(s) is taking place.

With this stream we aim at bringing together organizational studies scholars who are interested in theoretically and empirically exploring further what constitutes organizational boundaries, how they are negotiated and enacted. Beyond contributions to these broader questions the fol-lowing topics are of interest for the stream, but the list is not exhaustive:

• How do general accounts of societal developments, such as ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman), ‘risk society’ (Beck) or ‘reflexive modernity’ (Beck/Giddens/Lash), relate to our concep-tualizations of organizational boundaries? How helpful are metaphors such as ‘liquidity’ or ‘fluidity’ for such conceptualizations?
• Are there other, so far neglected, social theories or philosophies that can help enhancing our understanding of organizational boundaries?
• What are the important dimensions of organizational boundaries and how can they be studied empirically?
• How are organizational boundaries related to societal inclusion and exclusion, i.e. who can define boundaries? And for whom are boundaries transgressable and for whom not?
• How is identity construction connected to organizational boundaries and what impact do changing organizational boundaries have on individuals’ identities today?
• What role do organizational responsibilities and accountability play for conceptualiza-tions of organizational boundaries? Does the growing importance of third actors, NGOs, intermediaries etc. change our understanding of organizational boundaries?
• How exactly do new forms of work organization and employment change the social con-struction of organizational boundaries?
• How are workers’ and managers’ lifeworlds and organizational practices connected? How are the boundaries between work and life enacted and negotiated – by organiza-tions and by individuals? Do individuals develop strategies of resistance against too clear-cut or too loose boundaries between work and the rest of their lives?

We are looking forward to receiving your contribution!

Key words: organizational boundaries, accountability, networks, work-life boundaries

Submission: Abstracts should be about 1000 words in length (including references), set in A4 page layout, single spaced and in 12 point font. They should be sent by email to p.fleming@qmul.ac.uk by April 1, 2011. Full papers for inclusion in the Conference Proceedings are due by October 30, 2011.

KEY READINGS
Becker, K.H./Haunschild, A. (2003) ‘The Impact of Boundaryless Careers on Organizational Deci-sion-Making: An Analysis From the Perspective of Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems’ International Journal of Human Resource Management, 14 (5):713-727. Boström, M./Garsten, C. (eds.) (2008) Organizing Transnational Accountability. London: E.Elgar. Fleming P (2009) Authenticity and the Cultural Politics of Work: New Forms of Informal Control. Oxford: OUP. Garsten, C. (2008) Workplace Vagabonds: Career and Community in Changing Worlds of Work. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Land, C./Taylor, S. (2010) ‘Surf ’s Up: Work, Life, Balance and Brand in a New Age Capitalist Or-ganization’ Sociology, 44(3):395-413. Leng, L.W./Dahles, H. (2005) ‘Conclusions: Organizational Boundaries Reconsidered’ Asia Pacific Business Review, 11(4):593-598. Marchington, M.P./Grimshaw, D./Rubery, J./Willmott, H. (2005) (eds) Fragmenting Work: Blur-ring Organisational Boundaries and Disordering Hierarchies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paulsen, N./Hernes, T. (eds.) Managing Boundaries in Organizations. Multiple Perspectives. Bas-ingstoke: Palgrave. Sandberg, J./Dall’Alba, G. (2009) ‘Returning to Practice Anew: A Life-World Perspective’ Organi-zation Studies’, 30:1349-1368. Seidl, D./Becker, K.H. (2006) ‘Organizations as Distinction Generating and Processing Systems: Niklas Luhmann’s Contribution to Organization Studies’ Organization, 13(1):9-35.
Warhurst, C./Eikhof, D.R./Haunschild, A. (eds.) (2008) Work less, live more? Critical Analysis of the work-life boundary. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Peter Fleming is Professor of Work, Organization and Society at Queen Mary, University of Lon-don. His research focuses on critical approaches to work, organization and society. The emphasis is on power, conflict and resistance in emerging organizational forms, as well as theoretical un-packing the significance of such concepts. Over the last few years he has conducted research around power and resistance in call centres that have culture management programmes. His other interest includes business ethics and the social dynamics of corporate corruption. Recent books are Contesting the Corporation: Struggle, Power and Resistance in Organizations (with A. Spicer; CUP, 2007) and Authenticity and the Cultural Politics of Work: New Forms of Informal Con-trol (OUP, 2009).
Christina Garsten is Professor and Chair at the Department of Social Anthropology (Stockholm University) and Research Director at Score (Stockholm University and Stockholm School of Eco-nomics). Her research interests are in the anthropology of organizations and markets, employ-ability, careers and community in changing worlds of work, processes of globalization, and emerging forms of regulation and accountability in the labour market and in transnational trade. She has published a number of articles on high-tech organizational culture, flexibilization of em-ployment, and corporate social responsibility. Recent co-edited books are Ethical Dilemmas in Management (Routledge, 2008), Workplace Vagabonds (Palgrave, 2008), Organizing Transna-tional Accountability (E.Elgar, 2008), and Transparency in a New Global Order (E.Elgar, 2008).
Axel Haunschild is Professor of Work, Employment and Organization at the University of Trier, Germany, and Visiting Professor at the School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London. His research interests include changing forms of work and organization, creative indus-tries, the institutional embeddedness of work and employment, CSR from an industrial relations perspective, organizations and lifestyles, and organizational boundaries. He has recently co-edited Work Less, Live More? Critical analysis of the Work-Life Boundary (Palgrave, 2008).

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STREAM CONVENERS

Deborah Jones
Victoria University of Wellington
Aotearoa New Zealand
Email: Deborah.Jones@vuw.ac.nz

Todd Bridgman
Victoria University of Wellington
Aotearoa New Zealand
Email: Todd.Bridgman@vuw.ac.nz

The Open Stream welcomes papers that address a current research theme, issue or problem in the organization studies field but do not align easily with the focus of the other eight streams. For example, papers might address the organizational dynamics of power, control, resistance, identity, diversity, gender, minorities, indigeneity, ethics, emotions, or networks. Papers might alternatively address specific contemporary issues such as poverty, recession, financial crisis, new technologies, governance, branding, supply chain processes, risk and security, as these relate to organizing and organizations. Or papers might engage with traditional or classical management or organizational theory, or a domain of organizational practice, e.g., consulting, accounting, information systems, marketing, operations management, industrial relations, innovation and entrepreneurship.


Submission: Abstracts should be about 1000 words in length (including references), set in A4 page layout, single spaced and in 12 point font. They should be sent by email to Deborah.Jones@vuw.ac.nz by April 1, 2011. Full papers for inclusion in the Conference Proceedings are due by October 30, 2011.

Biographical Notes:
Deborah Jones is an associate professor at Victoria Management School. She has published on gender, ethnicity and equality in organisational studies, and on cultural labour and creative industries . She is a coordinator of OIL (Organisation, Identity and Locality), the Critical Management Studies group in New Zealand.
Todd Bridgman is a senior lecturer in organisational behaviour in the Victoria Management School and a former journalist. He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge and and has recently edited The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies (Oxford University Press, 2009) with Mats Alvesson and Hugh Willmott.

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Precisely what is meant by ‘local’ is contested, and as such ‘local’ can be considered a ‘relative term’ (Woodin & Lucas, 2004). This stream is concerned with what is local and the relationship between local and sustainability. Sustainability as a multi-level concept (Starik & Rands, 2001) has to engage both at the global and local levels and this relationship frequently causes considerable friction. While at the local level, the global influences what might be construed as sustainability, it should be remembered too that the local level influences global sustainability.
This stream calls for papers that explore the notion of local in relation to organising for sustainability. Sustainability provides a useful context to study the relationship between local and global and indeed the study of these relationships adds value to understandings of sustainability. Key questions could include, but are not limited to:
- How does where you are from influence the way in which you conceptualise sustainability?
- What constitutes local?
- Is local necessarily best understood by opposing the notion of global or can we recognise the two as an intertwined dichotomy? Is the term glocalisation (Wodak, 2005, Larner, 2001) of any particular use in advancing our theorising?
- What value is there in bioregionalism?
- How does location affect responses to climate change, to the food and air miles debate and to consumption and waste?
- How does location affect organising for sustainability?
- How can an organisation, like a business, simultaneously ‘think global and act local’?
- What should a conference like this one set out to achieve in order to justify its existence?

Key words: location, local, sustainability, climate change, food consumption/production, waste.

Submission: Abstracts should be about 1000 words in length (including references), set in A4 page layout, single spaced and in 12 point font. They should be sent by email to sara.walton@otago.ac.nz by April 1, 2011. Full papers for inclusion in the Conference Proceedings are due by October 30, 2011.

References

Larner W, 2001, “Governing globalisation: the New Zealand call centre attraction initiative” Environment and Planning A 33(2) 297 – 312
North, P. (2010). Eco-localisation as a progressive response to peak oil and climate change – A sympathetic review. Geoforum, 41(2010), 585-594.
Singer, P. & J.,Mason.(2006).The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, Melbourne; Random House
Starik, M., Rands, G.P., 1995. Weaving an integrated web: Multilevel and multisystem perspectives of ecologically sustainable organizations. Academy of Management Review, 20(4), 908-935.
Sturgeon, T. J. (2001). How do we define value chains and production networks? IDS Bulletin, 32(3), 9-18.
Winter, M. (2003). Embeddedness, the new food economy and defensive localism. Journal of Rural Studies, 19, 23-32.
Wodak, R., (2005) Editorial: Global and local patterns in political discourses — ‘Glocalisation.’ Journal of Language & Politics; 4(3), 367-370

Biographies

Sara Walton is a senior lecturer in the area of business, sustainability and the natural environment. Her research includes analysing triple bottom line (TBL) company reports and constructions of sustainability, examining ecopreneurial businesses in New Zealand, business responses to climate change and natural resource based conflicts.
Kate Kearins is a professor with interests in business, sustainability and stakeholder engagement. Increasingly she is considering possibilities for alternative ways of organising that support nature, and diminish the production of harm. Her work focuses on local expressions and broader theoretical explanations, published across a range of journals. She is an award-winning case–writer, and keen supervisor of important student research in her areas of expertise.

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