organization

Ghostly matters in organization

Are organizations haunted places? Oh, yes indeed! Come with us into this ephemera special issue to explore the ghostly matters of organizing. 
This issue sets out to encounter and explore ghosts and ghostly matters in organizations and organizing. The contributions meet, hunt, sight and summon ghosts in various organizational settings: public parks, primary schooling, digital afterlives of scientific controversies, financial capital, old books and in quotas for women in management. 

‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’

Damian O’Doherty’s Reconstructing organization is a wild tale of bob cuts and cats and talking chairs, set within the confines of Manchester airport. Rarely has a steel and concrete waiting room (for that is what airports are to its visitors, if not its employees) seemed more vivacious and colourful. Think Alice’s Wonderland with its strange and curious creatures, the author its likeable, excitable, Mad Hatter.

Occupy Nova Scotia

Introduction*

Standby as mode of organization

submission deadline  
15 Sep 2019
call for papers pdf  
PDF icon Standby as mode of organization.pdf

Issue Editors: Laura Kemmer, Annika Kühn, Vanessa Weber and Birke Otto

Standby, in its technical sense, refers to devices that are neither on nor off. It designates an operating state in which, despite apparent shutdown, energy continues to flow to guarantee sudden reactivation. However, the term does not only appear in  technological data sheets or user manuals. Standby increasingly acts as a mode of organizing in our daily life worlds. Comparable to the ‘sleep mode’ of a laptop, workers use non-active phases to recharge which, unlike designated breaks, constitute a state in which they must be ready to be re-activated at any time. While being on standby is a common experience amongst professionals such as medical doctors or service personnel, more and more sectors require such availability ‘on short call’. However, it is not only humans but also the material and technical elements of our infrastructures that remain under constant tension. From transport terminals... more

Keywords  
standby
sleep mode
in/activity
organization

Organizing for the post-growth economy

Perpetual economic growth is an underlying assumption of the contemporary organization of capitalist society. The idea of growth is embedded not only in the corpus of economic thought but also in economic institutions. Against this backdrop, this special issue opens up for critical and creative thinking around organizational issues related to growth, economy, sustainability, and ecology.

Open issue

submission deadline  
30 Sep 2016
call for papers pdf  
PDF icon Open issue call (2016).pdf

Issue editors: Matthew Allen, Stephen Dunne and Katie Sullivan

ephemera welcomes open submissions, outside of special issues, that address themes relating to the theory and politics in organization.

Theory

ephemera encourages contributions that explicitly engage with theoretical and conceptual understandings of organizational issues, organizational processes and organizational life. This does not preclude empirical studies or commentaries on contemporary issues, but such contributions consider how theory and practice intersect in these cases. We especially publish articles that apply or develop theoretical insights that are not part of the established canon of organization studies. ephemera counters the current hegemonization of social theory and operates at the borders of organization studies in that it continuously seeks to question what organization studies is and what it can become.

Politics

ephemera encourages the amplification of the political problematics of organization within academic debate, which today is being actively de-politicized by the current organization of thought within and without... more

Keywords  
theory
organization
politics
workshop

The disjointedness of time: Ghostly matters in organization

17 Dec 2015

This ephemera workshop aims to discuss how the study of ghosts and ghostly matters in organizations can contribute to an understanding of what organization and organizing is. It will explore the disorderly, the unexplainable, the uncanny qualities of organizational life and attends to all the different sorts of ‘absent-presences’ that haunt, disrupt, distort, trouble, and bother the smooth functioning of work life. Additionally, it aims to learn about fissures between... more

Keywords  
ghosts
organization
hauntology

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