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Journal of Management Inquiry -- April 2019 Issue -- Open Access

  • 1.  Journal of Management Inquiry -- April 2019 Issue -- Open Access

    Posted 04-04-2019 22:41

    JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT INQUIRY April 2019

    Apologies for cross-postings. Please enjoy free access until May 10 by clicking on the URL for each article.

    FEATURED ARTICLES

    The Rhetoric of Power: A Comparison of Hitler and Martin Luther King Jr.

    Jill L. Robinson1 and Danielle Topping

    JMI 22(2): 194–210

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492612451789    

    Charismatic leaders present intriguing examples of the use of power through language. The prevailing neo-charismatic perspective, however, is based predominately on Western theories and research examining U.S. presidents. This study moves beyond this sample by examining language differences between a moral and a toxic leader. Content analysis was used to explore the rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr. and Adolf Hitler, whose distinct motives play out over their careers and during crises. Although some differences were predictable (i.e., Martin Luther King Jr. used more Optimistic language, whereas Hitler was higher in Power and Aggression), the changes over time suggest keys to their differing motives. Among other findings, Martin Luther King Jr. was remarkably consistent in his rhetoric, whereas Hitler used increasing Power and Aggressive language as his career progressed. While not providing definitive answers, these preliminary results suggest that further study is warranted into the complex interactions between rhetoric and leadership.

    Keywords rhetoric, charisma, power, toxic leaders, moral leaders

     

    Deliberative Lobbying? Toward a Noncontradiction of Corporate Political Activities and Corporate Social Responsibility?

    Irina Lock1 and Peter Seele

    JMI 2016, Vol. 25(4) 415–430

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492616640379

    Recently, researchers have claimed that food and beverage corporations should be excluded from the development of public health policy because their lobbying activities strategically undermine the promotion of public health. At the same time, recent political corporate social responsibility (CSR) theory holds that corporations have a responsibility to help solve global public issues. We address this described misalignment and show that corporations may fulfill this "new political role" if they turn to novel forms of corporate political activity (CPA) establishing a minimal standard for not contradicting their CSR. Therefore, we put forward a normative concept called deliberative lobbying based on discourse, transparency, and accountability, which aims to resolve public issues and advance CPA. In three lobbying cases, we show misalignments and contradictions that harm both society and the corporation. We position deliberative lobbing as an argument to maintain self-regulation against critics claiming that corporations should be excluded from all political processes.

    Keywords ethics, corporate social responsibility, corporate political affairs, public affairs, lobbying

     

    March 2019 ISSUE

    Uninhibited Institutionalisms

    Mats Alvesson, Tim Hallett, and Andre Spicer

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 119–127

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492618822777

    Institutional theory (IT) is a very influential set of approaches in organization studies. There is increasing critique that the set is becoming uninhibited: too broad, dispersed, and confusing. Efforts to rejuvinate the field(s) have led to all-embracing definitions and efforts to account for too much, which makes it difficult to identify what is distinct about the assembly of research. This article discusses critically the state of IT and suggests some reconceptualizations of institution and institutional theory and points at some alternative lines of development.

    Keywords institutional theory, critique, reconceptualizations

      

    Gamification: Concepts, Consequences, and Critiques

    Mikko Vesa and J. Tuomas Harviainen

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 128–130

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492618790911

    The domain of work is etched into our minds as a domain of the sombre, the orderly, the very coalface of dull modernity through which our societies prosper. Work also demarcates that which is of value; work itself; from that which is less so; e.g. play. But as the behemoth of global capitalism lurches forward into the 21st century we are witnessing a; be it new or simply renewed; interest in merging work and play. It is this development, labelled gamification, that this dialogue collection of essays explores offering conceptual and critical insights into the possibilities and problems of this attempted merging.

    Keywords gamification, theory of play, organizational creativity, organizational design, work process design, post-bureaucratic organizing

     

    Gamification in Management: Between Choice Architecture and Humanistic Design

    Sebastian Deterding

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 131–136

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492618790912

    Gamification in management is currently informed by two contradicting framings or rhetorics: the rhetoric of choicearchitecture casts humans as rational actors and games as perfect information and incentive dispensers, giving managers fine-grained control over people's behavior. It aligns with basic tenets of neoclassical economics, scientific management, operations research/management science, and current big data-driven decision making. In contrast, the rhetoric of humanistic design casts humans as growth-oriented and games as environments optimally designed to afford positive, meaningful experiences. This view, fitting humanistic management ideas and the rise of design and customer experience, casts managers as "second order" designers. While both rhetorics highlight important aspects of games and management, the former is more likely to be adopted and absorbed into business as usual, whereas the latter holds more uncertainty, but also transformative potential.

    Keywords gamification, design, management, scientific management, humanistic management, rhetorics

     

    Gamification Misunderstood: How Badly Executed and Rhetorical Gamification Obscures Its Transformative Potential

    Richard N. Landers

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 137–140

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492618790913

    Although management gamification has immense potential to broadly benefit both management and employees, its impact to date has been lackluster and its value unclear. I credit this to a market proliferation of rhetorical or "fake" gamification, a process which involves the decoration of existing organizational processes with game elements but with little or no attention paid to the psychological processes by which those elements influence human behavior. For gamification to be successful, specific psychological characteristics of employees or customers must be targeted, and game elements must be chosen to influence those characteristics. In theoretical terms, legitimate gamification in management can be defined as a family of work and product design techniques inspired by game design, whereas rhetorical gamification is at best novice gameful design and at worst a swindle, an attempt to make something appear "game-like" purely to sell more gamification. Only by carefully distinguishing legitimate and rhetorical gamification can legitimate gamification's potential be fully realized.

    Keywords gamification, rhetorical gamification, management, theory, psychology, game design, human resources, organizational behavior

     

    The Serious and the Mundane: Reflections on Gamified CSR Communication

    Hannah Trittin, Christian Fieseler and Kateryna Maltseva

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 141–144

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492618790920

    We debate the strategic application of game elements to corporate messaging regarding societal and ecological concerns. We propose that gamified corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication is potentially well suited to create attention and involvement for corporate CSR initiatives. However, we argue that many gamification applications undermine their purpose and increase stakeholder suspicions about CSR. By debating the potential benefits and risks of gamified CSR communication, we aim to open the scholarly debate on the appropriateness of gamification in CSR.

    Keywords corporate social responsibility, CSR communication, gamification, play

     

    The Gamification of Work: Lessons From Crowdsourcing

    Benedikt Morschheuser and Juho Hamari

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 145–148

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492618790921

    The nature of work and management are in flux; work is increasingly distributed, sporadic, community-driven, and motivated by constant self-development. Developments such as sharing economies, crowdfunding, and crowdsourcing have emerged as new forms of organizing work and economic coordination. At the same time, increased gaming and gamification of our lives have arrived to address this newly found yearning for intrinsically motivated work. Thus, work is increasingly consciously and unconsciously gamified. Crowdsourcing is a frontrunner management domain in employing gamification to positively affect motivation and performance of workers. However, to be able to harness the full potential of gamification, a union of knowledge of interwoven areas of game design, motivational psychology and management is needed. Therefore, in this article, based on the accumulated body of research on gamification in crowdsourcing, we discuss the emerging opportunities and challenges of using gamification in management.

    Keywords gamification, crowdsourcing, human computation, motivation, participation, human resource, work

     

    Always Already Playing: Hermeneutics and the Gamification of Existence

    Perttu Salovaara and Matt Statler

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 149–152

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492618792185

    What if play is more than just an attitude or set of behaviors? What if the world is fundamentally and inherently playful? What if, when we find ourselves playing, we are not the authors or agents who initiate the activity, but instead we are giving ourselves over to the play of the world, being-played as it were? In this essay, we consider these questions in reference to the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics, discussing the work of Gadamer and others and tracing out the implications for gamification research.

    Keywords Hermeneutics, play, ontology

      

    Embodied Organizational Routines: Explicating a Practice Understanding

    Alex Wright

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 153–165

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492617713717

    This article contributes to theory development through advancing an embodied framing of organizational routines. It addresses the absence of bodies in a literature that tends to treat the "people" involved in organizational routines as disembodied actors. One consequence of this is that progress toward a theory of "routines as practices" has tended to ignore how bodies contribute to their unfolding. Theorizing embodied communicative acts brings the body and embodiment into organizational routines research. Existing knowledge is extended by drawing from multiple empirical illustrations to explain how routines are accomplished when power is exercised through gesture and bodily movement, the spaces where routines unfold cohere with human bodies making a difference in how they are constituted and experienced, and, the routineness of routines is made manifest when mutual intelligibility is discerned in the silences that characterize how embodied actors interrelate.

    Keywords embody, embodiment, routines, practice, communication, space, power

      

    Conceptions of Conflict in Organizational Conflict Research: Toward Critical Reflexivity

    Elisabeth Naima Mikkelsen and Stewart Clegg

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 166–179

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492617716774

    Diverse and often unacknowledged assumptions underlie organizational conflict research. In this essay, we identify distinct ways of conceptualizing conflict in the theoretical domain of organizational conflict with the aim of setting a new critical agenda for reflexivity in conflict research. In doing so, we first apply a genealogical approach to study conceptions of conflict, and we find that three distinct and essentially contested conceptions frame studies of conflict at work. Second, we employ two empirical examples of conflict to illustrate how organizational conflict research can benefit from a more reflexive approach and advance our understanding of conflict. In this essay, we emphasize how philosophical and political assumptions about conflict frame knowledge production within the field and we encourage future theory development to build on different notions of conflict to become better at coping with the complex and dynamic nature of conflict.

    Keywords Organizational conflict, conflict management, philosophy of science, reflexivity, theorizing

      

    Wake Up! The World Is Out of Balance and If You Do Nothing You Are Part of

    the Problem: An Interview With Henry Mintzberg

    Guilherme Azevedo and Andrew Gates

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 180–186

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492618761811

    Henry Mintzberg has made-and continues to make-fundamental contributions to various areas of management research, practice, and education. In this "Meet the Person" conversation, he discloses part of his journey in pursuit of a rebalanced society. He talked to us about the reasons and the process behind the writing of his book Rebalancing Society, in which he argues that a healthy society is one where there is a balance across its public, private, and plural sectors. This conversation with Henry Mintzberg offers perspectives that are inspiring and provocative. Overall, it also reveals his expectations of how the framework provided by the book can help to reframe the relation among different parts of society to bring our planet back into balance.

    Keywords rebalancing society, plural sector, social change, communityship, writing

      

    (Engaging or Avoiding) Change Through Reflexive Practices

    Paul Hibbert, Lisa Callagher, Frank Siedlok, Charlotta Windahl, and Hee Sun Kim

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 187–203

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492617718089

    In this article, we explore the ways in which individuals deploy reflexive practices in order to avoid or engage with a call to change either oneself or the social context. We begin by developing a categorization of the modes of reflexive practice associated with avoidance or engagement. We go on to develop-through a relationally reflexive research process-three contributions that build on this. First, we build an understanding of what a repertoire of reflexive practices may include, and "what is going on" in such reflexive practices. Second, we explain how reflexive practices can be mobilizing, thereby enabling shifts between avoidance and engagement modes, or fix action within a single mode. Third, we develop an understanding of the ways in which emotions and relationships influence how reflexive practices of either kind are deployed.

    Keywords qualitative research, organization theory, work-life conflict/management, affect/emotions

     

    Organizational Routines and Institutional Maintenance: The Influence of Legal Artifacts

    Isabelle Royer and Alexandre Daniel

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 204–224

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492617730402

    This article investigates how managers perform routines under artifacts in an institutionalized environment designed to exert pressure to comply. Using the framework of routines as generative systems, we studied the legally regulated disciplinary sanction routine in French public nursing homes. We found that managers tend to choose lesser penalties than those specified by law, and that legal artifacts have both coercive and symbolic dimensions that influence routines in different ways. The coercive dimension favors compliance with formal procedures but motivates departure in substance (penalty). In contrast, the symbolic dimension motivates compliance in substance and leads to complementary actions. The combination of the opposed influences tends to limit departure in substance, and helps maintain both artifacts and the institution that they carry. Our findings contribute to linking the routine and institutional literatures, and may be of interest to organizational control scholars.

    Keywords routines, artifacts, compliance, truce, institutions, regulation, healthcare

     

    Getting to the CORE: Putting an End to the Term "Soft Skills"

    Jennifer Parlamis and Matthew J. Monnot

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 225–227

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492618818023

    We need to retire the term "soft skills." A new vocabulary for describing critical social and organizational skills is long overdue. Substituting the acronym "CORE" (Competence in Organizational and Relational Effectiveness) for the loaded word "soft" provides a more fitting term for the important skills the term describes and, in doing so, reframes the perceptions of these key skills to reflect their importance for career and organizational success.

    Keywords CORE skills, soft skills, reframing, workplace competencies, leadership

     

    Grounded Theory in Practice: Novice Researchers' Choice Between Straussian and Glaserian

    Fahad M. Alammar, Ali Intezari, Andrew Cardow, and David J. Pauleen

    JMI 2019, Vol. 28(2) 228–245

    https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492618770743

    Novice researchers face challenges in applying grounded theory and choosing between its two historical approaches-Glaserian and Straussian. Although much has been discussed regarding the differences between the Glaserian and Straussian approaches, these differences can confuse early researchers, leading to the flawed use of grounded theory in management and organizational research. Using three case studies (a PhD graduate, a PhD candidate, and a PhD supervisor) in a management and organizational research context, this article illustrates these key differences and provides guidance for researchers in choosing between them. By providing examples and commentary, this article aims to help researchers to choose and apply the most appropriate form of grounded theory within the field of management and organizational research.

    Keywords grounded theory, management education, qualitative research

      

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    The Editorial Board of JMI thanks Sage Publications for its generosity in sharing published articles openly.  



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    Richard Stackman
    Professor
    University of San Francisco
    San Francisco CA
    (415) 422-2148
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