(Apologies for cross-posting)
CALL FOR PAPERS
Organization Science
Special Issue on "The Cultural Construction of Organizational Life"
Submission deadline: May 30, 2008
Submissions open May, 2008
Guest editors:
Tina Dacin, Queen's University,
tdacin@business.queensu.ca
Klaus Weber, Northwestern University,
klausweber@northwestern.edu
Cultural approaches to organization have experienced a renaissance in
recent years. The resurgent interest in the cultural construction of
organizational life can be seen as a "second wave" of cultural analysis in
organization science. The first wave of cultural approaches to
organizations paralleled a broader cultural turn in the social sciences in
the 1980s, and sparked interest in collective meaning systems at the level
of groups, organizations, industries, fields or countries. An important
initial contribution of cultural analysis was to conceptualize contextual
constraints on thought and behavior, be it in the form of organizational
cultures, national differences or field level isomorphism.
The current "second wave" of cultural research goes beyond this focus on
culture as constraining context, by drawing on recent advances in cultural
analysis in sociology, anthropology, psychology, history and linguistics.
Two differences illustrate the resulting expanded agenda for the cultural
analysis of organizations: First, culture is construed as both a pragmatic
resource and as a contextual constraint. Individuals and firms use cultural
materials in strategic ways, but also face questions of power, skill,
audience and variation in the negotiation of meaning. Second, culture is
seen as more constitutive than contextual, located inside rather than
outside organizing practices. Ideas, moralities and symbols enable and
mediate core processes of organizing, so that questions of how culture is
produced, transmitted and applied become salient. This approach to cultural
analysis promises to transcend or at least re-cast traditional
distinctions, such as cultural versus economic explanations, institutional
structure versus individual agency, fabricated versus genuine
communication, to name a few.
In this special issue, we seek to advance this "second wave" of cultural
analysis. We take an expansive view of culture to include a range of
symbolic formations and resources, including meaning systems, routines and
traditions, frames and logics, codes, language, images and objects. We
welcome theoretical and empirical papers at any level of analysis and using
any methodology. We especially encourage submissions that address
fundamental questions about the nature and role of culture in organizations
and fields, suggest innovative designs and methodologies, or re-examine
puzzles in existing research that have not traditionally been examined from
a cultural lens.
Possible topics include but are not limited to questions of:
1) Identity and meaning making: For example, processes and resources of
identity construction, authenticity and skillful self-presentation.
2) The production of culture, myth making and story-telling: For example,
what role do leaders, organizations, the state and the media take in
shaping collective understandings? What tactics and structures facilitate
this task?
3) Tradition and customs: For example, the crafting and experience of
organizational heritage, the role of customs and rituals in cultural
maintenance and change.
4) The evolution and transformation of central cultural symbols and ideas
in organizations: For example, the semiosis of key words, concepts and
artifacts, evolutionary models of emergence and change in language and
codes over time.
5) The cultural construction of markets, competition and industries: For
example, how do language games, social codes and frames shape competitive
and population dynamics?
6) Power, control, and contestation: For example, the interaction between
organizations and public discourse in regulating corporate behavior,
dynamics of symbolic management, the politics of culture within and between
organizations.
7) Technology and entrepreneurship: For example, how stories and cultural
understandings shape technology trajectories and entrepreneurial careers,
the strategic use of culture by entrepreneurs, the role of cultural
processes in managing R&D projects and alliances.
8) Strategy crafting: For example, cultural variation in strategy making,
rhetorical tropes and the discourse of strategy.
9) Organizations as social enterprises: For example, how do cultural
practices affect the social and economic good created by organizations? How
are objectives, performance and worth constructed in the first place?
10) Globalization and culture: For example, processes of hegemony,
hybridization, translation and bricolage and their implication for
organizational practices and countries.
This list of questions and topic areas is suggestive rather than
exhaustive. We are open to a wide range of approaches that articulate clear
and significant contributions to theory, methods and practice.
Submission process: Manuscripts must be submitted by May 30, 2008.
Manuscripts should be submitted through the Organization Science web site
(http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/orgsci) indicating that the work is
intended for this special issue.