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Inspired by the South American research tradition known as “social technology,” this article proposes an operational framework to advance the understanding of mechanisms that help to promote social transformation. To illustrate its theorizing potential, we apply the framework to a nonprofit organization–Parole d’excluEs–that was created in Montreal (Canada) in 2006 and that has been promoting citizen mobilization and commitment to social change (parole-dexclues.ca). To that end, we offer a theoretical paper with an empirical illustration as a first step in a reflection on employing a global South theoretical lens–drawing on the concept of social technology–to make sense of a global North social innovation experience and to advance existing knowledge on the mechanisms of social transformation. The results contribute to social innovation research and practice, particularly at the interface between the management and nonprofit literatures.

The right to the city represents a critique of the city as a place and an object of capitalist accumulation, in which priority is given to exchange value over use value. This critique references an ongoing and collective struggle for urban production to be radically democratic, as the expanded participation of city users would lead to appropriation, with social movements occupying a central role. This paper discusses the practices of urban social movements that cooperate with governmental institutions participating in and influencing the design and implementation of public policies. We focus on the possibilities of transformation towards the right to the city as well as the conflicts and contradictions that social movements face when partnering with the State. We carry out an in-depth investigation of two social movements involved in building housing units in Brazil as part of a federal government programme. By conceptually translating the right to the city into the economies of worth, we propose an original theoretical approach. Our study contributes to advance the understanding of the role of social movements that collaborate with governments without abandoning the goal of struggling for the right to the city. We add a pragmatic perspective to the radical conception of the right to the city by showing how different logics of action enable or hinder the possibility of the right to the city horizon. We propose that the prominence of the civic common world might transform operational processes mainly through self-management.

In this article, we examine the value of combining transformative and service learning pedagogical practices in management education programmes to encourage management students to be more critical and reflexive regarding serious contemporary issues like social inequality and sustainability. We draw on a long-term management education experience conducted in the northeastern region of Brazil, where international students learn how to develop a real-time community-based project with local inhabitants. We argue that while service learning approaches promote pragmatic action-based principles, transformative learning acts at the epistemic level, contributing to change in values. In addition, Paulo Freire’s ideas are integrated to reinforce critical and reflexive dimensions of the learning experience. Our results offer a process-based model showing how a critical experiential learning pedagogy might lead to the development of community-based competences, which, in turn, might lead to changes in the deeply held values of the participants. Freire’s emancipatory ideas are applied not only regarding the relationship between teachers and students, but also to the distinction between Western and non-Western societies, going beyond questioning of the destructive consequences of financial capitalism to question the hegemony of one worldview over all other possible ones.

In this paper we propose a methodological tool that seeks to contribute to the empirical study of practices in organization studies. There is a need for innovating and improving analytical tactics for theorizing about practice, particularly for helping connect localized social interactions to broader contexts. We propose the “temporal bracketing of discourses” tool and provide a detailed example that empirically illustrates its application. RESUMEN En este artículo proponemos una herramienta metodológica que busca hacer una contribución al estudio empírico de prácticas en estudios organizacionales. Existe la necesidad de innovar y mejorar las tácticas analíticas para teorizar la práctica, en particular para ayudar a conectar las interacciones sociales localizadas con contextos más amplios. Proponemos la estrategia analítica temporal bracketing para los discursos e incluimos un ejemplo detallado que ilustra empíricamente su aplicación. RESUMO Neste artigo, propomos uma ferramenta metodológica que busca contribuir para investigações empíricas da perspectiva da prática em estudos organizacionais. Existe a necessidade de inovar e aprimorar táticas analíticas para teorizar a prática, particularmente para ajudar a conectar interações sociais localizadas em contextos mais amplos. Este artigo propõe o “temporal bracketing” de discursos e inclui um exemplo detalhado que ilustra empiricamente a sua aplicação.

In this paper we propose a methodological tool that seeks to contribute to the empirical study of practices in organization studies. There is a need for innovating and improving analytical tactics for theorizing about practice, particularly for helping connect localized social interactions to broader contexts. We propose the “temporal bracketing of discourses” tool and provide a detailed example that empirically illustrates its application.

RESUMO Os espaços de trabalho compartilhados, conhecidos como coworking , são ambientes de trabalho que se disseminaram com rapidez nos últimos anos, e distinguem-se como um novo modelo de trabalho. O objetivo deste artigo foi analisar práticas e relações em ambientes de coworking a fim de se compreender como ocorrem e como contribuem para construir espaços de interação social. Para tanto, foi conduzido um estudo de caso único, realizado em profundidade, cujos dados foram coletados a partir de técnicas de inspiração etnográfica, incluindo intensa observação participante, entrevistas semiestruturadas e análise documental. O estudo de campo teve duração de 25 dias, ao longo dos quais utilizou-se dos métodos de observação direta e entrevistas, realizadas com 40 associados do espaço escolhido. Os resultados identificaram três níveis de relações que suportam um espaço de trabalho que vai além do compartilhamento. Em cada nível foram identificadas práticas que favorecem a construção de um espaço de interação social: práticas de autogestão, práticas de negócios cooperados e práticas comunitárias. Por fim, lança-se a chamada a uma reflexão em compreender o que de fato significa construir um espaço social dentro de um espaço de trabalho.

In this article, we argue that citizenship conceived within a context of neoliberal rationality helps explain the emergence of what we term the ‘citizen as consumer’. We define the citizen as consumer as someone who relates to the state and the public realms from the private perspective of consumption. We ask how this emergent neoliberal citizen is configured in peripheral countries that are regarded as exemplifying ‘weak’ citizenship. To respond to this question, we consider the protests that occurred in Brazil in 2013 as an empirical illustration. Our main objective is to rethink the citizen/state relationship in consumer studies, employing a dialectical analysis to understand how the better-known consumer-citizen movement, in which the consumer acts as a citizen and gives birth, under a neoliberal rationality, to a movement that somehow disrupts these roles such that the citizen starts to act as a consumer. The Brazilian protests provide insights that advance debate on the scope and limits of the hybridisation between citizens and consumers and on the transformations in the relationship between citizenship and politics.

In 2004, I published a book chapter that marked a first moment in my qualitative research journey. The methodological piece was a result of a challenge imposed by my doctoral committee for my thesis proposal defense two years prior, who invited me to ‘rigorously’ sustain the quality of a qualitative research project conducted under the premises of critical-interpretivism. This challenge indeed was a gift, as it provided me an opportunity, very early in my academic career, to deeply reflect about the meaning of doing qualitative research. Now, around fifteen years later, the invitation to write a thinkbox again represents a timely opportunity, as I found myself again reflecting … not on the dilemmas of doing non-mainstream qualitative research, but on the researcher's role itself. More precisely, I am seriously thinking about the role of distance and engagement to the value of the knowledge we produce with our academic work. In this essay, I redraw this entire journey—from 2004 to 2018—with the intent to nourish the dialog with my peers about the engagement of the academic community with transforming society for the better, and to provide some guidelines to doctoral students seeking to truly engage with transformational research.

The understanding of conflicts represents an important topic in organization studies. One might argue that, although different perspectives have been assumed, most of them end by attempting to ‘dom...

Based on a reflexive and critical analysis of the citizen protests that pervaded Brazilian cities in June 2013, in this article we argue that a significant part of the demonstrators’ dissatisfactio...

This paper investigates the development of an electronic platform by a local government with the goal of increasing citizens' participation in public decision-making process, particularly the modality known as participatory budgeting. The local government of Belo Horizonte, a Brazilian municipality, decided to use web-based technologies to create a project called digital participatory budgeting (DPB), whose purpose was to include new segments of the population -particularly the middle class and youth - in the process of prioritizing the allocation of investments in the city's public works. The project was launched in 2006 and repeated in 2008 and 2011. Intriguingly, however, citizen participation decreased significantly. This study seeks to understand why citizens' participation decreased over time, despite the availability of a cutting-edge, user-friendly and iterative web-based platform to help connect citizens to the process. The theoretical approach is based on social representation theory (SRT) and the methodology of critical discourse analysis (CDA) of 101 documents and 19 interviews. This combination of SRT and CDA helps in understanding how people gave meaning to a new social object - the digital participatory budgeting - through their voices. Simultaneously, this approach represents a skillful approach to uncovering power imbalances signaled by "silences". The results suggest that deviations in the social representation process, namely, trivialization and reification, help us to understand the process through which citizen participation decreases. Therefore, governments seeking to improve eParticipation should, without neglecting the technical aspects, pay more attention to the social representational processes that characterize their web-based initiatives. We investigate the role of social representations in processes of public decision-making participation.The theoretical approach is based on social representations theory.The methodology is based on critical discourse analysis.Trivialization and reification in the social representation process helps to explain why participation decreases.Our results emphasise the explanatory role of discursive practices.

This paper explores how large-scale social-driven collaborations might grow in scale and help promote political change. We present the results of a qualitative investigation of a complex platform where multiple and hybrid collaborations co-exist and where civil society plays a central role. Based on a longitudinal comparative case study, we draw a processual model describing micro-practices and pathways of engagement. We show that the emergence of these collaborations requires a new type of convener, one that is able to manage the interplay between the sharing/co-creation of abundant resources and the coordinated decentralization of informal authority. Our study extends existing debates on the role of resources and authority, showing the complementarity between possession and practice perspectives of power. Finally, we identified synergies between collaboration and social movement literatures, particularly showing that large-scale collaborations could be mobilized to refine social movement agendas and achieve more purposive collective action.

This paper seeks to understand the use and the consequences of Participatory Geographic Information System (PGIS) in a Mexican local community. A multilevel framework was applied, mainly influenced by two theoretical lenses – structurationist view and social shaping of technology – structured in three dimensions – context, process and content – according to contextualist logic. The results of our study have brought two main contributions. The first is the refinement of the theoretical framework in order to better investigate the implementation and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) artifacts by local communities for social and environmental purposes. The second contribution is the extension of existing IS (Information Systems) literature on participatory practices through identification of important conditions for helping the mobilization of ICT as a tool for empowering local communities.

Integrative presentation on sociomateriality in management and organizational studies. We are at Paris-Dauphine University on a warm afternoon of May 2011. A small group of scholars and PhD students are currently occupying two rooms to start a new and informal experience together. Their wish is to create an occasion for discussing, from a multidisciplinary perspective, a number of emergent topics and their interconnection with technology and practices "in the context of organizing." Among the emergent topics, some terms appear prominent, like material, materiality, sociomateriality, and performativity. This first meeting sowed the seeds for the launching of a series of annual workshops under the name OAP: Organizations, Artifacts, and Practices. The purpose of this introductory article is to present the OAP community to the RAE readers in order to initiate a dialogue and eventually integrate Latin American voices in the so-called materiality turn. publishersversion published

The case provides an opportunity to understand how tecnologia social – a South American concept that might be seen as an equivalent to social innovation – can help promote social change. To illustrate the potential of social technologies, the case of Agencia de Redes is presented. The case is intended for use at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Its purpose is to promote the discussion of the South American concept of tecnologia social, as well as to analyse of one particular tecnologia social using a conceptual model to understand the mechanisms that might promote social change.

Mise au Jeu is a Quebec-based organization of social intervention which has been doing forum theatre, in the Augusto Boal’s tradition of Theatre of the Oppressed for over 20 years. In this article,...

Reflection on the hegemony of the English language and on the possibility of disseminating knowledge through linguistic diversity.

This paper discusses the adoption of a pluralist theoretical framework - one that is also multiparadigmatic - for conducting and publishing information system IS research. The discussion is illustrated by a single case study involving the Australian cotton industry. The theoretical framework is informed by three sociological theories, each with its particular paradigmatic assumptions: structuration theory as a meta-theory, and diffusion of innovations and gender relations as lower-level theories from notionally opposing paradigms. Theoretical pluralism helped to produce rich findings, illuminating both the social nature of women farmers' roles, the materiality of the cotton farming context, the characteristics of the decision support systems in use and the recursive way in which human agency and institutional pressures shape each other. Because users of so-called divergent paradigms often face criticism based on the incommensurability issue, one of the main contributions of this paper is to discuss the value of a pluralist and multiparadigmatic theoretical framework in dealing with complex IS social phenomena.

Although interest in the use of grounded theory methods has been increasing over the last decade, Urquhart, Lehmann, and Myers (2010) take note of the criticism that, in fact, such use has not yet produced higher levels of theory development in IS research. Along these lines, the current essay intends to make two main contributions. The first is to respond to the recent call for more studies developing grounded theorizing in IS research by providing a detailed description of the application of grounded theory methods in an emergent research area that combines IS and sustainability. The second, to extend current interpretations of grounded theory's basic characteristics by focusing on one important element: researchers' creativity. We argue that the role of researchers' creativity and imagination in the implementation of grounded theory methods has rarely been emphasized and should be the subject of further reflection. Although imagination is, from our perspective, inherent and crucial to any cognitive or intellectual process, the fact of being frequently neglected in IS research precludes its mobilization as a more purposeful influence in the process of building new theories.

This paper focuses on local adaptations, referring to the significant or subtle changes local firms make in their local business processes and rules in order to fit with a generic application system, and to the changes they make in the features of a generic application system. Local adaptations are therefore bidirectional in nature. Although several studies stress the importance of local adaptations for the overall success of information technologies (IT) used across locations, more research is needed regarding what kind of local adaptations are required for a particular generic application system to work well in particular localities. The nature and extent of local adaptations are still poorly understood. This paper provides a concrete illustration of a historically situated local adaptation: the case of Veiling Holambra. This Brazilian cooperative has imported a generic auction marketplace model from Holland and adapted it to local conditions, to succeed in a globalized and competitive flower market. Using concepts drawn from studies on globalization, cross-cultural implementations, and IT-based organizational change literature, we put forward three propositions that help to explain the success of local adaptations. The results of our case study indicate that the immigration of Dutch people was critical for bringing knowledge of cooperative structure and flower production to Holambra and led to a relatively small design-use gap. The ability to take local, contextual requirements into account without neglecting the ‘generic’ knowledge led to the successful implementation of the generic auction model. This mutual influence was particularly enabled by the Brazilian culture of improvization.

Giddens’s structuration theory is increasingly used as an alternative approach to studying numerous organizational phenomena. However, the applicability of Giddens’s concepts is not without difficulties because of two main challenges. First, structuration theory is complex, involving concepts and general propositions that operate at a high level of abstraction. Second, structuration theory is not easily coupled to any specific research method or methodological approach, and it is difficult to apply empirically. Arguing that structuration theory is a valuable framework for a rich understanding of management, organization and related subjects of inquiry, this paper aims to improve the application of structuration theory in empirical work by drawing on the experience in information technology (IT) research. It identifies patterns of use of Giddens’s theory in publications in the domain of IT, and then describes how IT researchers have attempted to address its major empirical challenges. The paper presents a repertoire of research strategies that might guide students of organization in dealing with three elements that are central to structuration theory: duality of structure, time/space and actors’ knowledgeability.

In this article, strategic management research using structuration theory from 1995 to 2000 is reviewed. I describe and analyse the theoretical articulations adopted to make sense of strategy using a structurationist view. I found that, instead of being applied as the sole theoretical foundation, Giddens’ propositions have been incorporated into other perspectives, the effects of which should be known by researchers looking for theoretical frameworks that avoid dichotomist thinking. The paper draws on the effects that structurationist arguments may produce regarding classical oppositions such as micro/macro and voluntarist/determinist. Its main contribution is to show how theoretical complementarities using structuration theory are promising avenues of research in the strategic management field. It also suggests that, although other alternatives of avoiding dichotomist logic exist, making a choice among them is more a question of ontological affinity than of making the ‘better choice’ among competing accounts. There are several routes to advance the understanding of the possibilities of human choice.

Empirical research on street-level bureaucracy has been exploring different ways by which public policies have been implemented in areas like health care, education and security, where the role played by discritionarity in the implementation process is often emphasized. In this study, we call for the value of complementing street-level bureaucracy discritionarity with the concept of proximity, brought from microfinance literature, in order to increase our understanding of the SLB/beneficiaries interaction process and its potential positive effects over public policy. To explore this question, we conceived a theoretical lens based on a frame analysis that explores SLB/beneficiaries relational mechanisms (Lotta, 2014; Goffman, 1974) and a methodological design based on a qualitative case study strategy (Stake, 1998). The results allowed us to show how proximity act on relational mechanisms, confirming the relational mechanisms found previously in the literature and pointing to new mechanisms, providing occa...

Leaving the thesis proposal defense room, the PhD business student had an important assignment to accomplish before being authorized to set a date for defending her thesis: to better justify the validity of her qualitative inquiry framed by a critical interpretive standpoint. Knowing that the generation, analysis, and interpretation of empirical materials are processes always conducted within some understanding of what constitutes legitimate inquiry and valid knowledge, she drew inspiration from ethnographical, confessional, critical, and post-modern work to propose a set of dialogical principles for conducting and evaluating a nonfoundational type of research inquiry. This manuscript revisits this venture a number of years later, reflecting on what has changed and what is still missing. We argue that there is a space and an occasion in the research methods literature for proposing dialogical principles for nonfoundational research, principles that are particularly relevant for qualitative researchers struggling in business schools worldwide.

A large crowdsourcing project managed by Fiat Brazil involved more than 17,000 participants from 160 different nationalities over 15 months. Fiat promoted a dialogue with an enthusiastic community by linking car experts, professionals, and lay people, through which more than 11,000 ideas were selected and developed to create a concept car using a collaborative process. Through an in-depth case study of this crowdsourcing project, we propose a new approach – the accordion model – which uses project management to help maximize the beneficial inputs of the crowd. Whereas the stage-gate process relies on a “funnel” of articulated sequences expressing a progressive reduction from an initial stock of potential ideas and concepts, in this article, we suggest that crowdsourced projects are more akin to a process that articulates a succession of broadening and funnelling periods that represent information requests and deliveries. We use the metaphorical terminology of “the sacred and the profane” to illustrate the interaction of sophisticated and ordinary ideas between the “sacred” experts from Fiat and the “profane” lay people associated with the project. Lessons learned from the Fiat Mio case suggest how both organizations and Internet users may benefit from successful crowdsourcing projects.

The use of information and communication technology (ICT), particularly that related to the consolidationoftheinternetasasocialandbusinessnetworkingmedium,hasimpelledgovernments towards enabling e-government (e-gov) programs to transform the future of the delivery of public services. E-gov has a clear economic, social, and political impact that should be monitored in order to steer the design of effective public policies. In this article, we argue that evaluating the impact of e-gov entails a complex process of e-gov performance assessment that should take into account the perspective of citizens. Supported by a framework that combines two theoretical views, namely the structurationist view of technology and the social shaping of technology, we propose a model that consolidates nine performance dimensions. This model is the result of empirical work based on an in-depth analysis of interviews with relevant social groups regarding their perceptions of the technological artefacts of e-gov.

In this paper we present a multilevel and pluralistic conceptual framework that is particularly useful for Brazilian researchers investigating information and communication technology (ICT) based social changes from a community/societal level of analysis. The framework is influenced by three theoretical perspectives: social shaping of technology, structurationist view of technology and contextualism. It integrates four main concepts - relevant social groups, interpretive frames, negotiation and technology-in-practice - organized in terms of three dimensions - context, process and content. The framework, already applied to 12 different research projects led by Brazilian scholars during the last four years, is seen as a work in permanent transformation and open to reuse, revision, remix and constant revalidation.

The multilevel framework proposed in this chapter is particularly useful for research involving complex and multilevel interactions (i.e., interactions involving individuals, groups, organizations and networks at the community, regional or societal levels). The framework is influenced by three theoretical perspectives. The core foundation comes from the structurationist view of technology, a stream of research characterized by the application of structuration theory to information systems (IS) research and notably influenced by researchers like Orlikowski (2000) and Walsham (2002). In order to extend the framework to encompass research at the community/societal levels, concepts from social shaping of technology and from contextualism have been integrated. Beyond sharing a number of ontological and epistemological assumptions, these three streams of thinking have been combined because each of them offers particular concepts that are of great value for the kind of studies the authors wish to put forward: investigating the influence of information and communication technology (ICT) from a structurationist standpoint at levels that go beyond the organizational one.

PurposeProposes the concept of rhetorical closure to address the phenomenon of pervasive IT “fashions”. Suggests that prevailing discourses surrounding IT are dominated by the rhetoric of closure and that such closure, although mutually constructed by suppliers, consultants and managers, has had several adverse consequences in terms of organizational change and results. Stimulates a critical thinking regarding the persistence of successive waves of new IT fashions and the consequences of closure on practice.Design/methodology/approachTheoretical framework informed by political views within the social shaping school combined with Habermas' theory of communicative action. Illustration of the argument is based on 22 semi‐structured interviews (senior practitioners from client‐firms, software suppliers and consulting‐firms working on ERP projects).FindingsOutlines the nature of the “chain reaction” produced by rhetorical closure from individual practices to the segment level. Identifies occasions for breaking down rhetorical closure at the three levels of analysis. At the individual level, opportunities are related to daily users' practices. At the organizational level, opportunities are related to ongoing organizational decisions and negotiations regarding IT adoption. At the segment level, opportunities are related to forming coalitions, networks and groups of users.Originality/valueAdopts an original perspective, examining the concept of rhetorical closure from a combination of two approaches: social shaping of technology and communicative action theory. Connects different types of closure to different types of rationality, and recognizes the specific validity claims underlying them. Calls into question current decision‐making processes that sustain IT pervasiveness and taken‐for‐granted assumptions of inevitability associated with new IT fashions.

In this paper, we argue that temporality is a key factor in students’ learning process in management-oriented service-learning programs. We propose a process-based service learning model that sugge...