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Purpose Taking issue with the predominance of reviews of James March’s writings that focus on his technical contributions to organizational studies, this study aims to emphasize the central significance and contemporary relevance of his critical reflections on the meaning of life and work in modern organizations. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a novel framework illustrated by extensive original quotations for capturing and making more accessible March’s profound contribution to organization studies. His work on organizational behaviour and decision-making is viewed as identifying and grappling with three key paradoxes of modernity: of rationality, performance and meaning. His prescriptions on how to handle and address these paradoxes are explored through a focus on his reflections on the poetry of leadership. Findings Whilst March himself emphasized that not all of his insights can be captured in an article level overview, March, his collaborator Olsen and others who worked with and studied under him have confirmed the accuracy of the review and the value of the enterprise. Practical implications Capturing March’s advocacy of sensible foolishness and playful seriousness in the face of ambiguity, uncertainty and contestation hopefully contribute to enhancing practitioners’ “lightness of being” in coping with and finding meaning in challenging environments. Originality/value Through the range of ideas covered, the framework used and the extensive use of March’s own worlds, the study, hopefully, communicates the depth and richness of March’s humanitarian enterprise and the “playfully serious spirit” that he advocates and exemplifies – in a way that is often omitted from narrower, more technical and somewhat dry treatments of his work.

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This article provides a critical re-view of the literature and studies of mindfulness at work. It offers a constructive and sympathetic yet also reflective and critical problematisation of the field. The re-view documents and examines the contributions of four different orientations towards mindfulness at work. These are as follows: individual mindfulness, collective mindfulness, individual wisdom and collective wisdom. Drawing on these contributions, the article makes the case for an ‘anti-anti mindfulness’. It argues for the self-critical promotion of mindfulness as a vehicle for extending and promoting the insights of organisational studies.

The field of mindfulness research and programs, in the workplace and elsewhere, has been a matter of considerable ambiguity and contestation. Distinguishing between first-generation and second-generation mindfulness-based initiatives has been a useful and positive response to this uncertainty and controversy. Second-generation mindfulness interventions in leadership are defined as going beyond views of mindfulness as a means to reduce the stress inherent in continual change, and as instrumental support for organizational performance in an economy of attention. The purpose of this paper is to build on this work in two ways. Firstly, it acknowledges the contribution of first-generation psychological-therapeutic programs. Secondly, it highlights the value of extending the range and depth of Buddhist-derived interventions beyond such programs and most importantly, also capturing and exploring the value of critical and collective approaches to mindfulness that derive from other traditions and schools of thought. In order to guide such a progression, this paper presents a Wheel of Mindfulness model that captures the different, and inevitably selective, lenses on mindfulness, and provides a generative framework for exploring and building on sources of controversy and debate.

Relational leadership invokes an ethics involving a leader’s affective engagement and genuine concern with the interests of others. This ethics faces practical difficulties given it implies a seemingly limitless responsibility to a set of incommensurable ethical demands. This article contributes to addressing the impasse this creates in three ways. First, it clarifies the nature of the tensions involved by theorising relational leadership as caught in an irreconcilable bind between an infinitely demanding ethics and the finite possibilities of a response to those demands. Second, it examines this ethical challenge in acknowledgement of the hierarchical discourses and power dynamics in which leadership relationships are constrained and enacted. Third, it proposes “ethical irony” as a way leaders can respond to the demand for ethics without resulting in either an escape from ethics, or being crushed by its burden. Three dimensions of ethical irony are examined: ironic perspective, ironic performance, and ironic predilection.

Resumo Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir e apresentar a sustentação teórica do framework 5M, desenvolvido com o intuito de conduzir gestores de uma visão acrítica e racional do gerenciamento da mudança para uma leitura mais crítica e pragmática, focada no gerenciamento para a mudança. Adotou-se a abordagem da mudança como drama, combinando o que vem sendo comumente descrito como uma visão fraca das organizações “como se fossem drama” e a visão forte das organizações “como drama de fato”. O exemplo da aplicação do framework 5M em um Master of Business Administration (MBA) de Gestão permitiu avaliar o seu impacto como veículo retórico de educação e prática de gerenciamento, bem como fornecer sugestão para posteriores refinamentos teórico-pedagógicos. Abstract This paper aims to discuss and present the theoretical support of the 5M framework, developed to guide managers from an uncritical and rational view of management of change to a more critical and pragmatic focus on managing to change. By adopting the change as drama approach, we combined what is commonly described as a weak view of organizations-as-drama and the strong view of organizations like drama. The example of the application of the 5M framework in an MBA course allowed to evaluate its impact as a rhetorical vehicle of education and management practice, as well as to provide suggestions for later theoretical-pedagogical refinements.

Self-efficacy’s influence on individual job performance has been well documented in laboratory studies. However, there have been very few rigorous field studies of self-efficacy’s relationship with objectively measured individual job performance in organizational settings. This research history might account for the low take-up of self-efficacy within the business literature as well as within business itself. When it comes to studies of employee engagement, the same lack of rigorous individual studies applies, although several organizational-level studies link employee engagement to organizational performance, while its claimed benefits have been widely discussed in the business literature. Finally, the degree to which employee engagement and self-efficacy have independent and additive effects on individual-level job performance remains unknown. In order to address these issues, a longitudinal field study was undertaken within an Australian financial services firm. Using survey data linked to obje...

Ambidextrous organizations outperform other firms by successfully navigating the contradictory demands of exploitation and exploration. Yet, how ambidexterity is achieved in practice remains unclea...

Organizational theatre interventions have become established as a pervasive and influential arts-based method of dialogic organizational development, yet their effects are controversial and contested. While they have been praised for their potential as a tool of empowerment, they have also been criticized for their possible use as a more or less insidious form of control. This article explores and evaluates such claims and counterclaims, supported by an in-depth longitudinal quasi-experimental field study of customer service staff in a regional Australian bank. The results of the field study not only indicate that organizational theatre interventions may increase both empowerment and control but also suggest that the outcomes may be more lightweight than supporters have hoped and critics have feared. The article outlines the implications of these findings for future research and practice.

Our modern society of organizations is confronted by paradoxes within and of modernity. Technicians of modernity are concerned with the former, providing advice on how to better manage organizations and those within them. Interpreters of modernity focus on the latter, surfacing and addressing the embedded paradoxes that confront all those living and working in modern society. This chapter aims to provoke thought and discussion on the latter by highlighting and elaborating on the significance of the work of James March. A key focus is on the contribution made by James March’s elegant appreciation of three key paradoxes of modernity—paradoxes of rationality, performance, and meaning.

This article analyses the role of HRM practices in the implementation of an innovative cross-functional approach to new product development (concurrent engineering, CE) in Eurotech Industries. Contrary to CE methodology stipulations, and despite supportive conditions, HRM received scant attention in the implementation process. Organizational power and politics were clearly involved in this situation, and this article explores how their play created such HRM ‘absences’. The article builds on a four-dimensional view of power in order to provide a deeper understanding of the embedded, interdependent and political nature of HRM practice and innovation.

PurposeThis paper seeks to raise for discussion and reflection some of the key dynamics of action research projects‐in‐practice. It focuses in particular on how action researchers broker academic and client interests, and how this brokering shifts over time.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on participant observation, drawing on the reflective and processual accounts of action researchers involved in a collaborative academic–industry–government project.FindingsThe paper argues that the scope of action research projects to effectively address the needs of both audiences is compromised by managerialism in universities and organizations. However, the emergent and chaotic nature of action research provides opportunities for researchers to overcome some of these limitations.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper provides a model and case analysis to support critical reflection amongst action researchers.Practical implicationsIf the argument of the paper is accepted, then action researchers are required to pay greater attention to the dangers of managerialism in universities, and explore how such dangers can be overcome.Originality/valueThe originality of the paper lies in its self‐critical sociological reflexivity. Its value depends on whether or not this is found to be valuable by action researchers.

This paper offers a theoretical ‘action research spiral’ model to guide reflection on the dual client focus of action research. While theoretically exploring and highlighting the tensions and dilemmas created by this dual client focus, this paper will argue for a greater degree of reflection on action research practice and utilize vignettes from action research cases to illustrate those reflective processes. It is concluded that further discussion and reflection on the process of action research is an important component of social science’s contribution to phronetic knowledge. I saw the University as helping us to reflect on what we are doing—they are the expert reflectors. This is particularly what I saw as X’s role. Sometimes his interjections go above their heads and his ‘nine words or less’ statements need to have some explanation, and I should feed this back to him. I also see the University as playing a visionary role, helping to show us new things about what is possible. I don’t see the University ...

All successful innovation, including effective human factors interventions, needs to address the problems of organizational inertia as well as active opposition and resistance. Yet our common understanding of how to “manage” such problems—described in this article as the management of organizational change—embodies a restricted and ineffective view of change management. The author proposes an alternative approach, viewing change management as an activity of leading changing institutions. This approach captures the fluid character of change(ing) as an emergent process, the complex social character of human institutions, and the crucial role of leadership in constructing collective goals and purposes in situations of conflict and uncertainty. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 16: 229–245, 2006.

In 1949 in Mann Gulch and in 1994 in South Canyon, US firefighters died trying to outrun forest fires. They died ‘with their packs on’, weighed down by their satchels and other heavy firefighting equipment which they continued to carry despite instructions to remove them. Karl Weick (1996), in exploring why they did not ‘down tools’ when so ordered and it seemed rational to do so, raised central issues about the role of tools in people’s work identity, and the complex social and technical arrangements that make us hold on to ‘heavy tools’ when, in hindsight at least, a more flexible and responsive approach to changing conditions appear to warrant their release. This merging of people and the tools that they employ, the intertwined identities of our ‘material’ and ‘non-material’ cultures (Ogburn, 1964), is the subject of a growing number of studies extending far beyond the confines of technological change at work or within organizations. The questioning of the modernist assumption of a clear and unequivocal divide between ‘people’ and ‘things’ raises fundamental questions about how we are to understand technology, ourselves and progress in a late modern era. In an age of postmodern reflexivity characterized by the declining authority of metanarratives, questions are inevitably raised about the validity and meaning of any view of technology as an autonomous, independent and progressive ‘great growling engine of change’ (Toffler, 1970: 25). In what Latour (1994) characterizes as our ‘amodern’ world, the fundamental mythical divide upon which the self-understanding of our modernist culture was based – the separation of the ‘technical’ and the ‘human’ – is recognized by many for what it is (and was): a cultural equivalent of Canute ordering back the waves. The

Organizational actors involved in cultural change programmes have a consciousness and experience that is often fragmented, contradictory and ambivalent. Studies documenting ambivalence have, however, tended to assume that there is a relatively clear and unambiguous change programme about which employees are ambivalent. This article argues that the nature of such programmes is more uncertain and ambiguous than this suggests. Drawing on a six-year study of the introduction of a cultural change programme in the coke-making plant of an integrated steelworks, this article details how cultural ambivalence intertwines with practical ambiguities in the course of such programmes to create complex cultures of ambiguity

Development projects usually benefit when expertise is drawn from diverse sources, including potential users. Orchestrating the involvement of disparate groups requires finding a balance between differentiation, when teams work separately, and integration, when groups meet to exchange knowledge. This paper argues that a “community of practice” perspective can help project managers achieve this balance, by drawing attention to the assumptions, interests, skills, and formal and tacit knowledge of the different groups involved. Using a case study as illustration, we show that integration can be achieved by ensuring that the developing technology is comprehensible to all groups concerned, and that it satisfies their various interests.

A long tradition of discourse and practice claims that technology designers need to take note of the characteristics and aspirations of potential users in design. Practitioners in the field of user-centered design (UCD) have developed methods to facilitate this process. These methods represent interesting vehicles for the pursuit of normative politics of technology. In this article, the authors use a case study of the introduction and use of UCD methods in Australia to explore the politics of getting the methods to work in practice. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour and Marc Berg, the authors argue that UCD methods are tools for engendering new forms of socio-technical relations. However, their normative potential does not arise out of their ability to manipulate abstract categories such as user, technology, and workplace. Instead, it arises out of the complex and unpredictable socio-technical mixes that are generated when people attempt to put them into practice.